Luke Berry had given the Hatters the lead in the first-half before Jack Marriott replied for the away side. But like he did on Tuesday night, Jordan Clark scored the winning goal, this time with three minutes to play as Town held on to move up into second place in the Championship.

“I’m really pleased overall with the win,” said the gaffer, whose baby daughter Olivia (pictured with dad) was attending her first game at Kenilworth Road.

“I thought first-half we were excellent. I think that’s as good as we have played in the first half, on the front-foot, pressed well and moved the ball and looked a real, real threat. Harry was outstanding.

“Second half I thought we took our foot off the gas, took a backwards step which I didn’t want us to do because you can’t do that at Championship level.

"We allowed Derby onto us and fair play to them, they changed shape, tweaked things with Rooney dropping deep and he can cause problems if you don’t get to him and that’s a learning curve for us but we responded really well to not give up, not just to be content for the 1-1.

“We made positive changes and a great goal to finish. We tweaked the shape twice and it proved fantastic in the end.

“It was as good a Championship performance as I think I’ve seen from us, I thought we were organised, I thought we pressed, we were aggressive, athletic and if it wasn’t for margins, we would have gone in further ahead.

"I was delighted with the goal. One of the midfielders gets in the box, another one arrives back-stick and these are things we work on, stuff that we ask and demand from them.”