Nathan Jones confirms reason for latest Luton Town exit

The defender departed the Hatters this summer and has now moved to fellow Championship side Rotherham United for an undisclosed fee.

The 49-year-old confirmed that he could not guarantee Kioso a starting position in the team and so sanctioned the sale of the 22-year-old.

Jones believes that it was the right thing to do at this stage of the player’s career, despite being a fan of what he can provide to the team.

The Luton manager also claimed that he wasn’t particularly pleased to see Kioso go, but that he was never going to get a guaranteed place ahead of James Bree in the team’s pecking order.

“I wasn’t necessarily happy to do it, but to clarify everything, to put everything into perspective, we would liked to have kept Pete, because Pete was a valued member of the squad,” said Jones, via Luton Today.

“Could I guarantee that Pete was going to play 35, 40 games?

“No, because ahead of him was James Bree, who I think is the best right wing back, attacking full back in the division, and he was last year, and is, for me, he is, so that’s the competition he had ahead of him.

“Then he’s got Reece Burke there, so he would have been a valued member and I wanted to keep him.

“We offered him a new contract, but I’d said to him I’d be fair that if something came in that was attractive to him and we had a number of clubs, good clubs, that came in.”

Kioso played 16 times in the league for Luton last season and also enjoyed a spell on loan at MK Dons, where he played 18 times in League One.

He has now joined Rotherham, who earned promotion to the second division last campaign with a 2nd place finish in the table.

Luton begin the new season with a home tie against Birmingham City on July 30.

While Kioso has shown some potential during