Luton boss Rob Edwards has admitted that he’s facing the biggest challenge of his career and says he’s “hurting” over the club’s poor start to the season, but that he’s trying to make improvements.
With four defeats and just two victories in their opening eight games of the Championship the Hatters face arguably their stiffest test yet at Sheffield United tomorrow.
That’s put into even sharper focus because the two teams both got relegated from the Premier League last term, with the Blades rock bottom.
But Chris Wilder’s side have adapted better to life back in the second tier, and are the only team yet to lose in the league so far and have conceded just three, having set a new top flight record for the number of goals conceded in a campaign (104).
Town, on the other hand, let slip a two-goal lead at home to Oxford on Tuesday and though they held on to take a point, playing with ten men for the last 13 minutes, Edwards admitted after the game that he saw a side lacking on “confidence and belief”.
Asked if the task of changing Town’s current form and run of results is his biggest challenge so far, Edwards said: “Yeah, probably. I think everything has been a really challenging year, never mind just the last few months.
“Trying to pit our wits last year against the best, managing a relegation, and then, at the moment now, when there is a lot more expectancy, and rightly so, and I accept that, we’ve got to find better performances and obviously the results off the back of it as well.
“So yeah, it’s big, big challenge. Believe me, I’m hurting with it as much as anybody. And you know, I suffer as much as anybody with it. You know I’m a fan of the club as much as an employee.
“And I don’t want us to suffer at all. So, it hurts, but we’re working really hard to try and make improvements.”
In particular Edwards pointed to the period where Oxford scored twice to peg Luton back on Tuesday night, with the tide only really turning once Liam Walsh was sent off and the Hatters went down to ten men on 77 minutes.
He said: “The performance, when reviewing it, 25 minutes wasn’t good enough, not what I want, not what we expect, but actually before that it was probably 30 or 35 minutes of really good stuff in the first half as well. And we finished the game well.
“So it wasn’t the end of the world. When you when you review it back in the cold light of day, yeah, we had a really poor 25 minute spell in the middle of the game where we conceded a couple of goals and too many big chances.
“And we’ve tried to address the the errors that we made there.”
Town’s inability to keep a lead has been a feature that they have carried over from the Premier League, most notably when they were 3-0 up by half time at Bournemouth, but lost 4-3. The result against Oxford in midweek was similar, though they managed to hold on for a point.
Edwards said: “The lads are human beings and it knocked their confidence during the game. One or two mistakes then that happened that just affected people and that is understandable as well. We’re not bulletproof, but we’ve got to be able to deal with those moments slightly better.”
He added: “The beauty of football is you have an opportunity again to to pick yourself up, an opportunity to win a game of football, opportunity to feel really good, and build confidence. We have that tomorrow.”
Town drew praise in the Premier League for the way they attacked teams and despite defeats there was a largely united front from the terraces to the pitch. But this season has come with more expectation, which currently is not being met, with some boos breaking out after the Oxford game.
Edwards said: “People care. We’ve had loads of praise and we’re going to get criticism because the fans care. They expect more, we expect more and it hurts. It’s not nice.
“It’s probably the lowest I’ve felt. It’s not nice but I promise people that we’re working really hard and we care as well to try and make sure that we get the good performances back. And obviously people care about winning, and that’s what we’re trying to do.”
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