Rob Edwards has suggested that Amari’i Bell is the key to playing a back four more often, despite a a rare defensive system change not preventing a 2-1 defeat at QPR that extended Luton’s away-day Championship woes to ten straight losses.
While Michael Frey’s handball assisted opener and Morgan Fox’s pure fluke winner were not Rangers’ only chances, the trade-off for Town switching to a back four appeared to be that they carried more threat going forwards, having scored just one gifted goal in their last three games.
Zack Nelson and Tahith Chong were both direct and caused problems out wide, while new signing Lamine Fanne had openings in open play, while from set-pieces chances went begging for Carlton Morris, Elijah Adebayo and, right at the death, for McGuinness who should have bagged a personal brace that would have rescued a point.
It’s at the other end that, save for a handful of examples this season, and much the chagrin of fans, the manager has largely stuck with what has essentially been a back five, including three centre halves. But at Loftus Road, he changed to see McGuinness partnered by just Tom Holmes in the centre, while Reuell Walters and Bell played as full backs.
Edwards said: “The lads gave everything. I thought, minus a couple of poor bits in the first half, where we didn’t mark in the box, which we went through a lot (in training), it’s the reason we probably play the back five a lot. You could see why. But then, minus those mistakes, there’s not a lot in the game.”
Despite a fourth defeat on the bounce, asked if there’s now more scope to utilise a back four, Edwards said: “Potentially. We’ve spoken about this in the past and, especially when you have Amari’i, he’s a natural left sider there to be able to deal with that.
“I know we have young Joe (Johnson), but you can see with (Paul) Smyth and the threat that he has, you need someone like Amari’i to be able to deal with those.
“And quite a lot of teams have got that speed in those wide areas and one-v-one specialists. So, certainly having Amari’i gives us that flexibility to do that more.”
Still, Town suffered with crosses however, particularly in the first 30 minutes, when QPR could have filled their boots, but didn’t through a mixture of Kaminski saves and poor finishing.
Edwards said: “QPR have been good here at home and they’ve got a head of steam up, but the only real threat was obviously defending the box from the crosses.
“Just got to make sure we mark and stay on men. There’s a couple of lapses in concentration, which can’t happen, but did. But then we really grew into it, I felt. And then it got to the point where they had to change it. They had to change the system, change the way they were playing.
“They did that actually more in the towards the end of the first half as well. We were starting to get some control and change the way they press and obviously then they had to make more subs to cope.
“Anyway, they’ve won the game, so it doesn’t really matter what they’ve done in the end.”
Be the first to comment