Tennis ball protest ‘killed’ our momentum, says Luton boss Nathan Jones

Luton manager Nathan Jones felt the Birmingham fans’ tennis ball protest affected his side as they slipped to a 3-0 defeat at St Andrew’s.

The game was halted briefly in the 14th minute when home supporters protesting against the club’s owners threw dozens of tennis balls on to the pitch.

Juninho Bacuna opened the scoring not long after play resumed with his first for the club before Lyle Taylor made it two with his third goal in four games and Onel Hernandez added a third.

“The tennis balls killed the momentum and then the steward stepped on to the pitch inexplicably (to try to clear the balls),” Jones said.

“I am very reluctant to not give Birmingham credit because they must have done something right, but we were really inept in our performance.

“We can’t affect the protest, but it did seem to kill our momentum.

“The second goal was disastrous, they just punted, it came off someone’s toe and it was a calamitous goal.

“We saved our two most inept performances for Birmingham.

“They didn’t had to work hard for anything, apart from the first 20 odd minutes.

“I thought we were really on the front foot, and had six, seven corners and free-kicks to really put pressure on them.

“It feels tough because we were really, really poor.

“We had our second worst performance of the season and, coincidentally, the first was also against them (in a 5-0 home defeat in August).”

Bacuna broke the deadlock after 25 minutes when Taylor held off Tom Lockyer to tee up the former Rangers attacking midfielder to finish high into the net.

Blues grabbed their second goal just 13 seconds after the restart.

Jeremie Bela’s pass was diverted off Henri Lansbury to leave Taylor clean through to side-foot past James Shea.

Hernandez coolly side-footed home