Nathan salutes his ‘ruthless’ Hatters...

HAPPY Hatters boss Nathan Jones said his side’s performance at Morecambe was ‘the best he had seen since taking over’.

The Luton manager lavished praised on his side as they inflicted a seventh successive home defeat on a Morecambe side who ended the game with ten men after Alex Whitmore was shown a straight red card for a tackle on Olly Lee.

After goals in either half from Danny Hylton and Issac Vassell earned Luton the three points, Jones said: “This was the complete performance, probably the best since I have been in charge.

“I thought we were excellent all over the park. We defended fantastically well and had a tireless work-rate with a real cutting edge as well.

“We had a ruthless streak that we don’t always show and I was delighted.

“We told the lads to get at them from the first whistle and that is exactly what we did.

“We took the game to Morecambe from minute one and I thought we were outstanding. The only disappointment was that we didn’t score more to be honest.

“Their keeper was inspired in the first half to keep it to one goal but overall I’m really happy.’’

Morecambe boss Jim Bentley admitted his side were beaten by the better team.

He said: “Things are very hard for us at the minute. We have lost our best player, the club’s finances have been in the news lately and it is hard being the underdog every week.

“Teams like Luton have so much more at their disposal than we have and they are a better team, it’s as simple as that. Any team that can have someone like Craig Mackail-Smith on the bench has a lot going for it . We are fighting a battle every week.

“We started slowly but then had two penalty claims turned down that we could have got on another day but we don’t seem to be getting any decisions our way.” Hylton opened the scoring with his 11th goal of the season on 26 minutes with a fine curling finish.

Vassell added a second with his first for the club just after the hour. Roche could only parry a Justin James shot onto the crossbar and the striker reacted sharply to head home.

Hylton was denied on several occasions by Roche and saw another effort cleared off the line. The home side’s best effort came from Cole Stockton. They also had two good penalty claims waved away before a final blow as Whitmore was sent off.