Potts wants Luton to stop giving away head-starts

Hatters defender Dan Potts knows his side have to stop giving opposition teams a head-start in games if they want to be in contention for a promotion challenge this season.
Dan Potts celebrates his last-minute winner at Oxford UnitedDan Potts celebrates his last-minute winner at Oxford United
Dan Potts celebrates his last-minute winner at Oxford United

Luton fell behind once more at Oxford United on Tuesday night, the eighth time they have conceded first in their 11 League One matches this season

Although Town have shown excellent powers of recovery to come back to win twice and draw three of those encounters, Potts knows that can’t always rely on that.

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He said: “You’ve only got to look at it, five games away from home, every game, we’ve probably made it hard for ourselves to say the least.

“But performances-wise, Peterborough first half was a massive disappointment, but apart from that, we’ve gone to tough places and you look at the game on the whole and the fans who have watched it, they’ll probably feel the same that we haven’t got our just desserts from the game.

“It’s now got to be we can’t give teams a head-start for us to then have to try and work our way back into it.

"Because we’ve got the character, got the spirit to come back, and we want to be getting the first goal and seeing these teams off.”

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Defender Alan Sheehan wondered if the Hatters would be better of starting the game imagining they were already behind, as he said: “We should do some psychology thing where we’re 1-0 going out at the very start, or something like that.

“It's the story of our season really. I don’t think anyone has really out-played us, we’re playing well, playing good football, creating chances, doing everything.

"Then you can see just after half time, it seems like sometimes we need a goal to be like 'hold on, we’re going to go up a gear now,' and that’s what I felt it did again.

"But it’s a great win, they’re not a bad side, they’ve got a lot of good players, it’s great to get the first away win of the season."

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Meanwhile, boss Nathan Jones said: “If we score first we don’t often lose, so it wouldn’t half be nice to score first and let another side chase it.

"We know we’ve got goals in us, but we don’t want to keep doing it.

"I’ll have to pick the bones out of it as he ran a long way Ricky Holmes, but he has that quality, he was doing that for Northampton, doing that throughout his career.

"He’s got a good left and right foot, he’s a potent little kid, fair play to him, and he’s a good player, but I’d be disappointed."

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Against Oxford, Potts was to be the match-winner, nodding home in stoppage time after James Collins had levelled the scores.

He couldn’t quite believe his side had been breached first, such was their dominance in the opening 45 minutes though, adding: "We definitely shouldn’t have been going in at 0-0, that’s been the story of our games on the road this year, we’re not coming away with what we feel like we deserve from our performances.

“When we come away, you knows teams are going to have chances, and they’re scoring from chances.

“That was the most disappointing thing from the night. We felt at half time they were going to change, they did, they went to the formation they’ve been playing all year and to be fair to (Ricky) Holmes, he’s a good individual talent.

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“We knew what he liked to do and saw what he could do. That’s the only disappointment from the night and luckily, it didn’t determine the outcome, we came back, showed good character and got the win.”