Block after block, clearance after gloriously dominant clearance. Mark McGuinness grabbed his moment to haul Luton right back into the Championship survival race.
The Town defender didn’t score the winner to secure a victory over nearest rivals Derby County, but he did damned near everything else, including providing the assist for Millenic Alli’s tenth minute decider.
That came in a dominant first half for the Hatters and the defender lunged to poke Jordan Clark’s corner across goal to where Town’s January signing pounced for his second in three games.
It stretched Luton’s away record to four unbeaten and moved them level on points with the Rams, but still in the bottom three by virtue of poorer goal difference.
Not that you would’ve known because of McGuinness’ thou-shalt-not-pass performance. Despite Derby turning the tables in kitchen sink-throwing second half which yielded everything but an equaliser.
Christ Makosso was also imperious, as was keeper Thomas Kaminski with a point blank save, while Kal Naismith went through the wars with a bandaged head to stem a first half cut, but one centre half stood up taller than everyone else to be counted.
McGuinness completed 19 clearances. Three of them goal-line blocks to repel wave after wave of County pumping balls into Luton’s box. The panic was palpable for all but the Republic of Ireland international.
“He’s been fantastic for us since he’s gone to the middle of the back three. He’s been he’s been absolutely immense,” manager Matt Bloomfield said.
“He’s a boy of big character, big leadership. and I thought he was excellent, absolutely excellent him with Thomas behind him.
“But I think he is a little bit harsh to single those guys out because as a team, as a group, as a football club, the fans are in full voice. The players on the bench behind me were in full voice, encouraging their mates on to a man I thought were immense.”
While it wasn’t a game for the purists, it was perhaps never likely to be, given the lowly placings of both sides, though Derby were the form side in the bottom half of the table, coming into the contest.
That showed to some degree in the second period as they played almost exclusively in Town’s half. However, that was not helped by the Hatters complete inability to retain the ball. They’d showed in the first half some proclivity for passing to each other, but after the interval they were guilty of giving the ball back to County for endless rounds of head tennis.
And that’s something that will have to improve in their final three massive games against play-off chasing Bristol City, Coventry and West Brom, otherwise this spirited victory will count for nothing.
“It’s a big one for us, but there’s nothing done yet. There’s still lots of work to do,” Bloomfield told Sky Sports.
“As we said before, the game, nothing’s decided. But obviously we’re still in there, we’re still fighting, still scrapping for our survival, and we’ll keep doing so.”
That fight was fully evident at Pride Park. Now, Luton will need to find some quality.
But, for now, the great escape is back on the cards.
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