STUPID RED FOR HYLTON INFURIATES BOSS JONES
Red card shame for Luton striker
BOSS Nathan Jones admitted that he sometimes wants to punch ‘wild horse’ Danny Hylton after Luton’s top scorer got himself sent off in the 2-1 victory over Notts County.
The triumph virtually assured the Hatters of a place in the League Two play-offs, with only a massive 18-goal swing capable of ending their campaign prematurely. Hylton’s league concerns certainly have.
The 26-goal striker came into this contest two bookings away from accumulating 15 and the accompanying three-game suspension. He picked up his 14th yellow for a stupid foul on Magpies keeper Adam Collin, but tangled on the turf with County’s Carl Dickinson in stoppage time, kicking out, to get his marching orders.
As it was his second red card of the campaign he will be banned for the last two league games, returning for the play-offs, but back on 13 bookings for the season.
“With Danny, I don’t know what to do with him at times. He’s just like a wild horse,” Jones said. “At times today he was immense but he’s the best dullest player in the league.
“I get frustrated with him day in, day out. I try not to because he’s so important to me, but some days he just makes me want to punch him.” Asked if Hylton had got the second
booking on purpose, the manager said: “I don’t think so. He’s not bright enough to have added up and to have done that. The way he did it, I don’t think it was on purpose. It was such a stupid challenge.
“Look, he makes me want to pull my hair out. I love him, I love the kid, I really do because he’s done unbelievably for me, but some days he just makes you wonder what goes on in his bonnet.
“I don’t want to cane him too much or be too disappointed because he’s magnificent for me today, apart from two acts of Danny Hylton-ness. But it’s not all about Danny Hylton. It’s about a great team performance. Let’s concentrate on that.” Though County took a sixth minute lead through an unstoppable Elliott Hewitt shot, Luton were rampant for much of the game and should have won by more. Hylton, for all his disciplinary woes, was fabulous and should have had a second-half hattrick having already hit the crossbar with a stunning effort that led to Ollie Palmer’s equaliser. The striker was the only player to follow the flight of the long-range curler, heading in after the ball crashed back off the underside of the bar.
Luton took a deserved lead in first-half stoppage time when Lawson D’Ath squared to Town’s most influential player Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu, who squirmed a shot into the bottom corner.
County, who already had their Football League status secured, did put up more of a fight in the second half and, because of Hylton’s wastefulness, it did need Stuart Moore to put in a commanding performance.
His flying fingertip save to deny Adam Campbell was the pick of his interventions and the visitors could not find an equaliser. Notts County boss Kevin Nolan was late to emerge from the dressing room and said of the delay: “It was just a frank discussion about what we’ve achieved, where we’ve come from and the reasons why the last two games I feel that we haven’t been the team for the five games previously. It has been disappointing.
“We had a go in the second half but that was about it. In the first half I thought we were very poor, but that’s what happens when you get that relief of what these lads have been through this season, of getting that safety, knowing you’re safe. You have that big sigh of breath.”