Jones said: “It was very, very disappointing. I think we got outclassed, outplayed and outfought."

The manager went over to the travelling Town fans immediately at the final whistle, and he said: “I love the fans, I love what they are and I’m not here to hide because I know today wasn’t good enough. Nobody needs to tell me, it’s a realisation of where we are because that is what we’ve got, but I’m not disappearing down the tunnel.

“Me personally, I work my backside off every day to try and make Luton as good as we can be and at the minute it’s not working, so I wanted to face it up for that reason, nothing else.

“Last week we were short and this week we were short. Now I’m in a privileged position that I’ve seen every single one of our players play Championship football and I know everybody’s capabilities, I know what the league is and I’m very, very clear about where we are and what has to be done.

“We have to negotiate six weeks first [before January]. I’m not a fool I know the game, I don’t kid myself. But if we do well enough to get to the January transfer window, we need to be stronger because you’ve seen Reading who are close to us at the table, how strong their individuals are and how much quality they’ve got and today, we were short.”