Rob Edwards was left bitterly disappointed by the 2-1 scoreline in last night’s defeat against Sunderland but believes Luton have turned a performance corner in the last two games after a difficult start to the season.
Having beaten arch-rivals Watford 3-0 at the weekend, Town took on the Championship leaders and delivered a dominant performance but were stung by two clinical moments of quality from the Black Cats.
With criticism from some fans about the style of play in the first nine games of the season, where the Hatters tried to build play from the back, since this month’s international break, there has been a “back to basics” approach, which boss Edwards spoke about earlier this week, and how Town have focused on their “non-negotiables”, “fundamentals”, while providing more “clarity” to players.
And against Sunderland, they largely played the first half camped in Mackem territory, but without finding the breakthrough, though Carlton Morris did score but Jordan Clark was adjudged offside, which Edwards questioned after the game.
But with the kind of aggressive, high-pressing football that helped Luton win promotion to the Premier League last year they stamped their authority on the high-flying Sunderland.
However, one mistake was ruthlessly exploited by Chris Rigg and though Elijah Adebayo broke his 11-game goalless streak this term to level, the visitors regained the lead three minutes later through Romaine Mundle.
But heads did not drop as they had in home defeat to QPR earlier in the campaign and Town finished the stronger, but just could not find an equaliser, despite claims for a penalty at the death.
But, even in defeat, the application and intent shown by Luton players drew cheers and an ovation from the terraces during the customary post-match lap of appreciation around Kenilworth Road.
Asked if he thought a corner had been turned with the performances put in over the last two games, Edwards said: “I think so, yeah. I think we’ve seen the top of the league at the moment and I know it’s still early days, but we’ve competed very, very well with them and in my opinion should have won the game. But we haven’t.
“So that was good. Saturday was great. So hopefully in terms of the performances there’s a consistency there isn’t there? It’s been good. There’s an intensity there. There’s a desire and a passion that the boys are playing with.
“That’s obviously got to maintain. (It’s) not perfect, I know that. But so many good things. We dominated in terms of territory and where we want the game to be played. The game, loads of it was in their half.”
But that’s not to say that Edwards does not have things to ponder ahead of the trip to Coventry on Saturday, not least how to make similar dominance count.
He said: “I think we had around 20 shots and four on target, something like that. So clearly then that last bit was not quite there.
“Some of our crossing was maybe a little bit overhit or just not quite where it needs to be. And I’m just thinking of in the first half, Tom Krauß put an amazing cross in and we’re just not there on the end of it. So it’s just positioning as well.
“But yeah, there wasn’t a lot wrong. So what we’ve got to do at the moment now is brush up on the two moments really that we that we got punished for.
“Rigg and Mundle, (they were) a couple of outstanding individual efforts, but we can do better to stop that and and continue to do what we’re doing at the moment because that’s two very good performances in a row.
“We haven’t got the result tonight, but we can’t lose heart or belief.”
