Town chief knows Luton can't keep relying on just one goal

Luton boss Nathan Jones is well aware his side can’t keep relying on scoring just one goal if they are to avoid looking nervously over their shoulders for the remainder of the Championship season.

Saturday’s 1-1 draw against Huddersfield was the 10th time that Luton have managed just one goal in their 27 second tier fixtures this season, James Collins with the strike after 11 minutes.

Although Town very rarely lose when scoring once, just a single time in that sequence, they have drawn five contests, and Saturday was the fourth time Jones’ men have taken the lead and been pegged back.

A lack of goals is the main area of concern for the Hatters this term, managing just 22 in the league, while breaking it down, they have failed to score on 12 occasions, managing two in a game just three times and three twice, when beating Norwich and Preston.

It means that although Luton are 15th in the table, they are now just six points above the relegation zone, as Jones said: “You can’t keep relying on one goal, but this level is a real good level, so to be high scoring, you either have to change how you approach which leaves us very vulnerable, or you sign special players.

“Now what we want to do is make sure we’re in games all the time.

“We’re very disciplined, we’re very organised and when we do create chances we need to take those as we created enough to have won the game.

“Fourteen shots, four or five on target and it’s converting those 14, as we’ve had double their shots, double theirs on target, but the keeper hasn't really had to make enough real top saves and that’s the thing.

“So we want to be a little bit more clinical, a little bit more ruthless and demonstrate just a touch more quality.

“It’s a top level, the fifth, sixth best league in the world for me.

“We’re not going to be the highest scorers in this league as there are people that we are competing with, who have 10, 11 times more than our budget and they can get players who can do something out of nothing.

“What we’re doing is, we are at our level, we believe this is our level and we’re doing fantastically well at this level, but we want to improve, we want to keep moving forward as we don’t just want to be content.

“That shows lately that we have missed chances, Middlesbrough, Birmingham here, Forest here, those are games we probably should have six, seven, eight more points.”

Town did create chances to go 2-0 in front, none better than on the stroke of half time when Dan Potts rose highest to meet Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu's excellent right wing cross, only to head against the post from a matter of yards.

Mpanzu then hammered over in the second period, with Collins denied by Terriers keeper Ryan Schofield, as Jones continued: "If that goes in (Potts' header) you’re 2-0 up and it’s very difficult to come back from that, as we’ve seen.

"They would have had to gamble and change or do something different and then that might have opened up things for us to be even more (attacking).

"That's the margins at this level and that's what we're disappointed with.

"We could have nicked it late on, if Pelly had gone down we might have had a penalty, Glen Rea’s hit the post, we've got right in behind them, squared it, Collo’s a whisker away, Pelly’s chance on the counter.

"There’s been a lot of good stuff to be pleased about, it’s just I would have liked to be a tiny bit more clinical, a tiny bit more creative and if we’d have done that, then we would have won the game."