Luton boss Rob Edwards has stated he won’t be ‘stubborn’ or ‘silly’ when it comes to changing his defensive set-up, although insisted the Hatters don’t usually play with a three-man defence that many fans are against.
Town’s back-line has been a cause for conversation amongst the majority of fans this term as they have regularly lined up with three centre halves who are flanked by two wingbacks. It has only led to two clean sheets from eight Championship matches to date though, that against Portsmouth and Millwall, as with Luton shipping five goals to Plymouth and Oxford in their last two games, it means they have now conceded 13 in total, the joint fifth worst in the division.
Although it might look like that the Hatters are sticking rigidly to a three man defence when the starting XI is announced, Edwards insist that isn’t the case when it comes to matters taking place on the field, as he said: “I think since we’ve gone to this kind of press, normally out of possession we’re never a three on that last line anyway, unless the opposition having three up there, so I’m not really having that argument.
“What they might do, we’ve almost matched that, but we can certainly make tweaks and it doesn’t mean we don’t try and change things if certain things aren’t working, not at all, we’re not that stubborn or silly. So we’ll look at that, but over the last few months, Alfie (Doughty), or if it was last season, maybe Issa (Kabore), or Amari’i (Bell), or whoever, Reuell (Walters), one of them normally bump in to give us a back four on that last line anyway. So the animation when the game is actually live and going on, it doesn’t always look like when you write it up on the board.”
At the start of the season you could say that Town had been unfortunate that everything the opposition was hitting was flying into the net, but that hasn’t been the case in the last three matches in particular, Sheffield Wednesday missing some glorious opportunities, as did Plymouth Argyle, even through they managed to find the net on three occasions as well.
It was taken on by Oxford on Tuesday night, Town stopper Thomas Kaminski having to be called upon to make a number of stunning saves for the second game running, as asked whether he thought Luton were conceding too many soft goals, Edwards continued: “It’s down to me and all of us to rectify, but we’re giving away too many big chances and too many goals.
“We’re equally as frustrated as it doesn’t give you a good platform to win games of football, so we have to address that, there’s no doubt about that. We’ve gone through some really good stuff over the last few days to try and do that. We still want to be an aggressive team and we still want to try and win the ball back as quickly as possible, but there’s elements there we could be better at.
“When we are defending low, there’s taking responsibility and defending those moments better. The second goal we conceded the other night, we’re actually there in good numbers, it’s about marking and picking up and doing those things really well as well. So we’ve had a good few days on that, hopefully we can see some improvement tomorrow.”
Weirdly, the times Luton have looked at their most defensively sound is when they have been down to 10 men and found themselves with little option but to move to a more traditional flat back four. It happened first against Portsmouth when Kaminski was shown a straight red card in the first half and then Oxford on Tuesday night for the final 15 minutes, Liam Walsh dismissed just 36 seconds after coming on.
On why he believes that has been the case, Edwards added: “I said how hard we ran back and across, the urgency that we showed then with 10 men, we need to do that with 11. There’s a few things that we’ve shown the players, without giving too much away, we were more compact, we weren’t pressing at every opportunity, so we weren’t opening up as much space for the opposition. There’s one thing there to think about but again as soon as we pressed, we closed the space again so it was almost like we go and then come back in.
“I showed an example the other day, we pressed with 11 men but then stayed and that ball goes in behind us, so it’s working hard, thinking more. Realising that there’s no hiding place when you’re down to 10 men, you’ve got to do it, and having that mindset with 11, which has always been our case and always been our message. But we’ve had 80 minutes or so with 10 men and looked really solid in those two games, so we know we can do it, and we have raised that as well”.
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