Graeme Jones declared himself half satisfied and half bothered after a 2-1 defeat to West Bromwich Albion and insisted his side gave Grady Diangana his two goals within six minutes of the restart, which killed the contest.
His Luton team dominated the first half and Harry Cornick gave Town a deserved lead with a bullet header from Martin Cranie’s cross.
But Albion boss Slaven Bilic introduced Diangana for the start of the second half and it reaped instant rewards, from which Town just couldn’t recover.
Though the first was a great strike from 25 yards and the second an instinctive header to convert a shot that deflected into the attacker’s path, Jones said: “West Brom didn’t score two goals today, we gave them two goals. They didn’t earn two goals, in terms of our staring positions as a team and that’s where the disappointment was.”
The result ended a 28-game unbeaten run in league competition for Town, but Jones insisted that the narrow defeat, Luton’s second on the spin by that score in the Championship, “wasn’t the story of the game.”
He added: “There’s 50 per cent of me really satisfied today and 50 per cent bothered by some moments in the second half. That’s my job to go away, analyse it and give direction and improve.
“I didn’t think for one second that that wouldn’t be the situation early in the season, so we are still taking strides to compete at this level. The first half was great, the second half needs to be better.
“I think if you’re looking at an ex-Premier League side, it was us in the first half.
“We couldn’t sustain it and Slav threw on a bit of power, changed the game and I think that summarised the game.
“Physically, we didn’t really come out after half time as I’d have liked, but that’s part of this period we’re in and we need to think of the positive aspect that we dominated the ball for the first 45 minutes and went in 1-0 at half time.”
Asked if he was disappointed about his side’s start to the second half, Jones said: “Absolutely. We spoke about all these things that we want to do; we dropped and gave West Brom the ball with space.”
On the positive side, Luton have now bagged eight goals in the Championship, all from different scorers and Jones praised the build-up to Cornick’s magnificent header.
“That came from our goalkeeper. The goal was scored from a goal kick and that’s the pleasing aspect. In play, free play, we’re controlling the game, we’re causing problems, tactically, and we score a goal from our free-kick.
“That’s been two month’s work. We need to do it more, we need to believe we can do it more and that’s where the work is.”
