Rob Edwards says Luton aren’t getting carried away by pre-season despite a promising 0-0 draw with top-flight rivals Wolverhampton Wanderers maintaining their unbeaten preparations for a first-ever season in the Premier League.
The Hatters’ have played League One and Championship opponents this summer, but a trip to Molineux, the manager’s former stomping ground, was a next level up, to give Town a sense of what they’ll be up against in the country’s top division.
Striker Elijah Adebayo had the ball in the net, with a stunning assist from latest signing Ryan Giles, who made the move from Wolves last week, but it was ruled out for offside.
But they equipped themselves well at the other end to keep out their hosts ahead of their final week of preparations for the Premier League, with a double-header trip to German outfit Bochum to come at the weekend.
After facing Wolves, Edwards said: “It’s a nice little taste of the level and what’s to come. So, overall, it was a really good night for the club. It was a good night for us. (There are) areas, of course, that we can learn from and keep improving at, but also I think we can come away from it with some confidence as well.
“It’s pre-season, so none of us are going to get carried away. They’ve got lots of talent, but every team has got lots of talent now.
“If I say it once now, I don’t have to say it the other 38 times, because we know we’re going into a really tough level.”
Town have signed six new players this summer and are promising more business, with the club linked to a £2.5million swoop for Blackburn Rovers keeper Thomas Kaminski and a reported battled with Sheffield United to snare former Arsenal academy graduate Ainsley Maitland-Niles.
So, the friendly was an exercise in further honing the way Edwards wants his team to play and he told the club’s website: “I feel like, tactically, we were good. I thought we grew into the game nicely, especially in the first half, and then I thought we looked the better team, for the last 15, 20 minutes of that first half.
“We created one or two really good chances, but gave away one or two that we can learn from as well. There’s definitely bits that we can take from that going into the next week of training. Overall, it was a good night.
“We’e got some new players. We’re still building people up. One or two still haven’t had those 90 minutes yet, because they were quite ready to. We’ve got a plan for them and we’ve obviously got another game coming up on the weekend, for the vast majority of the group, to work on a shape.
“You can see there’s an organised team there, but we’ve got to make sure we’re aggressive in that shape as well. I don’t ever want us to be passive.
“I think we probably felt our way in for the first 10, 15 minutes and thought, let’s wait and have a look at this. After that, we begin to get a bit more aggressive and make a bit more contact. It’s something we can do more. But, overall, I’m pretty pleased with what I saw.”
