Moore bemoans Hartlepool defence

Hartlepool boss Ronnie Moore blasted his side's defensive display as they fell to a 3-0 defeat against Luton.

The hosts went ahead as early as the fifth minute when Jake Howells' corner was headed in by Cameron McGeehan. Luton then doubled their lead after 15 minutes as Shaun Whalley was felled in the area and Howells confidently beat Scott Flinders from the spot. The Hatters then sewed up victory in the 75th minute when another corner was swung over and in an almighty scramble, Scott Griffiths diverted the loose ball past Flinders. Moore said: "I thought it was a disgrace defensively. We're in such a position, you wouldn't think how important that game was, that's the disappointing thing for me. "Every time they went forward they looked like they would score. As a back four we were all over the place, particularly down the middle, the two lads upfront are not the biggest, but backed in and made it difficult for us. "We struggled without Mirf (David Mirfin) in there and that was a worry to me as we were very vulnerable. "I said to them, 'I hope Mirf is fit next week, as we can't defend like that'. "If we defend like that we'll lose the next two games, there's no doubt about that, you cannot defend the way we did. "We had a lot of the ball second half, but didn't look like they want to score." Luton assistant Terry Harris was understandably delighted as his side closed the gap on the play-off places. He added: "It was a good day all round. It was a must-win game for us and with so much at stake, the first half was absolutely different class. "We got an early goal from a restart and could have had some more. It was a good first 45, the second half I thought we took our foot off the gas a little bit, but then we got back into it and thought it was an excellent 90 minutes. "We spoke about starting with a tempo, trying to get at them and we did that. We knew we needed to get a win to take it on to next Saturday regardless of how results went and I thought we approached it the right way."