Rob Edwards admitted Luton will have to “look at” Liam Walsh’s lack of discipline after his second red card in six games as Town slumped to a seventh straight Championship defeat, this time at Blackburn Rovers.
The Hatters boss also was left to rue yet more mistakes on the road as Amario Cozier-Duberry and Owen Beck put Rovers in front with a two-goal blast in eight minutes just before half time.
With the visitors trying to rescue something from the game, Walsh was summoned from the substitutes’ bench, but 11 minutes later he was back in the dressing room for a late challenge on Yuki Ohashi.
A straight red was waved and the protesting midfielder was pushed away three times by irate-looking captain Carlton Morris.
And from making his first return after a three-week hamstring lay-off, it was the second time his short 11-game Hatters career that Walsh has been dismissed, having been sent off after just 36 seconds of a substitute appearance against Oxford in October.
Edwards said: “He’s not a bad kid and he’s not done it on purpose, not to injure someone and going in a dirty way, but it’s a very similar tackle and it’s obviously happened twice when he’s come on, so we’ve got to look at it.
“He’s obviously cut up in there now because of what’s happened, but we brought him on because he’s a technical player and we thought we’re in the ascendancy at the moment.
“He can really help us create something here and we did. We kept pushing and he was involved in the game, but he’s made a mistake.”
Walsh became the first player to be sent off twice as a sub in a single Championship campaign since Jermaine Beckford for Preston North End in 2016/17.
And as it was Walsh’s second red card of the season, his ban will be extended from three to four games, and comes as Town are about to enter the busy Christmas period with six players unlikely to return from injury until the new year.
“Look, it’s standard procedure for us to have, loads of headaches and I’m used to it by now. I’ve had a year of it,” said Edwards.
The seventh straight defeat on the road puts more pressure on Luton to win their home games, with Derby County coming to Kenilworth Road on Friday.
And it also continues similar error-prone themes that have led to defeat on their travels, in the first away day since a “raging” Edwards slammed his men for four goals conceded at Norwich.
“People made some basic errors again, just like a couple of weeks ago when I was speaking to you after Norwich and it’s costing us,” Edwards told the BBC.
Rovers’ first saw three Hatters fail to thwart Brighton loanee teenager Cozier-Duberry, on his first start, as he slammed home low from just inside Luton’s penalty box.
Edwards said: “We were in the game and then one missed clearance, the build up to the first goal, ball down the side that, whether we need to put it out or not, I don’t know. And then we don’t deal with the throw-in, a missed tackle, they turn, loads of bodies around in the box that we don’t deal with Cozier-Duberry and it’s in the back of the net. Poor, really poor, defending the box.”
Elijah Adebayo and Tahith Chong both forced saves from Aynsley Pears in the same move, but then the hosts struck again.
Ohashi evaded his countryman Daiki Hashioka to sent a teasing cross through Town’s six-yard box to where Senegal striker Makhtar Gueye should have scored but Beck did.
It was the Liverpool loanee’s first goal for the Lancashire outfit and, having not conceded a goal in their previous four games, left Luton with a mountain to climb.
In the second half, the Hatters tried to find an opening, but Morris saw a header cleared off the line and another shot squirm wide.
“(It was a) decent reaction after the first goal,” said Edwards, adding: “We sort of go on the front foot again and then another ball down the sides that we don’t play offside and certainly not in that moment. We haven’t matched the run, so an easy ball down the side and it’s almost a gift.
“And at 2-0 obviously then it’s a huge uphill task for us. Look, the performance in the second half was good. At that point, at half time, we’ve obviously got to have more urgency and we’ve got to try and speed the game up. We did that and we took the ball more and we showed some courage
“Won more duels and everything else and all the stuff that should be given. It was obviously difficult a we’re in the ascendancy and then going down to ten men clearly made a difference, even though then we stayed on the front foot and tried to be as positive as possible. It was obviously then going to be very difficult.”
Thomas Kaminski spared Luton a larger margin of defeat late on, but the game had already gone when Walsh was sent for an early bath.
And for an injury-hit side with a worrying record on the road, the problems keep on mounting.
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