Luton Town’s 3-2 home defeat to ten-man Plymouth Argyle was more than a surprise result. For manager Matt Bloomfield it was a jarring reminder that his side cannot afford to be both wasteful and fragile — though he believes his men did everything possible in attack to try to rescue a result.
Goals have been difficult to come by since his arrival in January, with eight blanks drawn in 20 Championship outings at the end of last season and only three occasions when Town scored more than once. In their first five League One games this term, Town had either won and kept a clean sheet, three times, or conceded and lost, twice.
But then at Burton Albion and, in the Vertu Trophy against Barnet, prior to Saturday, seven strikes across the two games, as well as another league shutout, suggested a goalscoring corner had been turned, albeit against arguably inferior opposition.
Add to that expectation a raft of 14 new players signed this summer including a wealth of forward options. Indeed, CEO Gary Sweet wrote in his Plymouth programme notes that £23million had exchanged hands, plus a further £5million “in obligated commitments” from 20 deals in and out of the club. Luton returned to being wasteful, though not for the want of trying, as far as Bloomfield is concerned.
“We had another 23 shots today, added to our 22 against Cardiff. That’s 45 shots in the last two home games,” he said. “We’re getting in the box plenty, we just need to be more clinical and score more goals.”
Despite dominating possession and territory — with over 47 touches in the Plymouth box and an xG of 3.16 versus 0.95, but just seven efforts on target from 23 shots — Luton had to rely on two penalties for their goals, as ten-man Argyle racked up 82 defiant clearances, which was almost three times Town’s 30.
Among that were 41 headed clearances, and with only 16 corners it speaks to a repeated pattern of Luton trying to use their wide players, crossing the ball but coming off second best in the aerial battle of Plymouth’s penalty box, with defender Alexander Mitchell making 17 clearances on his own.
But asked if, given the circumstance again, he’d do anything differently in attack, with the 40 minutes where the Hatters had a man advantage, Bloomfield said: “I think we utilised all the attacking players that we had on the bench. We tried to play with as much width as we could, three forwards on the pitch, two wingers playing either side, and tried to create as many opportunities as we possibly could with the width try and spread our opposition and look for opportunities to either play through them or around them.
“That’s the game when you’re playing against 10 men. So I think we made the changes to be as attacking as we possibly could.
“If the crosses aren’t working, we needed to try and pass into the box. But the emotion of the game, at times, when we got opportunities to deliver, the boys were delivering. Of course, if you can stop the game and and analyse it and go back, but we can’t. The opportunities were there for us to get inside the box.
“They defended their goal extremely well. We’d have to go back and watch it and find out where we can be better.”
At the other end, prior to the weekend’s blunders, Town stood at the precipice of a club record in Football League stinginess at the start of a season. Now, Bloomfield will hope doubling their campaign’s goals against tally in 90 minutes proves a one-off, even if events hadn’t always backed up the clean sheet record of four in the previous six games, considering the hatful of chances that Wigan wasted last month.
“We’ve barely given a goal away from a mistake for a while and then three in the same game — very disappointing, very frustrating,” Bloomfield admitted. “All three goals were our mistakes and we have to eradicate them.”
Plymouth, who had not won on the road in League One before coming to Kenilworth Road, scored with all three of their shots on target, though the winner was a miscued clearance so it was not as if Bradley Ibrahim knew anything about Jordan Clark crashing a clearance against his head for the unlikely winner.
So, as well as being left to ponder how to turn domination into goals, Bloomfield was left to rue gifting soft chances at the back.
“We have to go back to being a really solid defensive team,” he said, adding: “because the more we let opponents get in front, the harder we make life for ourselves.”
More than anything, having conceded just three league goals before being punished by the Pilgrims, Luton will hope that the manner of the goals they coughed up will be an anomaly, or that they can rectify the fact that on the three occasions a rival team has scored against them so far this term, they’ve lost.
“Our opposition had three shots on target, from what I’ve just seen, and scored three goals. I don’t think that happens very often, but it happened,” Bloomfield said.
“All three goals were our mistakes that we have to eradicate, and we have to get to the top of the pitch and really go and grab hold of those off opportunities that come our way.
“It’s where games are won and lost in both penalty areas and it’s where we’ve lost a game.”
