Manager Matt Bloomfield says he’s “hellbent” on turning his struggling Hatters’ fortunes around after admitting his start to life at Luton “hurts”.
The 40-year-old left League One promotion-chasers Wycombe to take over at Kenilworth Road on January 14 after Rob Edwards departed – but eight games later and he’s still searching for his first Hatters victory.
And the team’s 12-game winless run has seen them slip to the bottom of the Championship table, five points plus goal difference from safety.
On top of that, Town have drawn a blank in five of Bloomfield’s games in charge and with 12 games of the season remaining, sports data company Opta this week predicted they will get relegated as the bottom side, with a total of 41 points.
Luton have 28 points at the moment, are the lowest scores in the division with 31 goals in 34 games and the third highest number of goals conceded (55).
“Our supporters haven’t seen the best of me yet. They’ve not seen the best of us yet. I’m fighting every day and I’m hellbent on making this a success,” said Bloomfield.
“I fall asleep thinking about it, wake up thinking about it. It’s everything. My life consists of making this a success and I don’t want to just sit here and talk about performances between two boxes. I want to win. I’m here to win.
“[It] never leaves me. Never leaves me. Every second of every day, I’m concentrating on the job.
“It hurts. I came here to win. I hate losing. I left a job where I was winning to come here and win and I’m here to win. And it hurts.”
Asked if his start to life at Luton has been different to what he expected when he left Wycombe, where he’d spent 19 years as player and manager, Bloomfield said: “Yeah, it’s been different.
“The number of injuries, trying to manage people through games, losing to injuries. We’ve got to be fitter. We’ve got to be more robust. We’ve got to be at it.
“It’s been hard, but I knew this job, I believed in this job. The reason I left the job I left to come here was because I believed in when I met Gary [Sweet – CEO] and Moons [James Mooney – operations director] the board of directors, knowing the heritage and the authenticity of this football club. I wanted to be here and I want to represent this football club with pride and our results haven’t done that yet.
“Nothing will stop me succeeding in this job. I’m here to succeed. [I’ve] not been happy with the results we’ve had so far. I feel frustrated and disappointed for our supporters.
“But there’s been things that have gone against us and things that we need to change and things we need to get better at. We’re working hard every day to make sure that happens.”
Portsmouth are the visitors to Kenilworth Road tomorrow, who went ten games without victory at the start of the season after being promoted from League One. But they will arrive in Luton nine points clear of the relegation dogfight after three straight victories.
Town have just come off the back of a damaging 2-0 defeat to arch-rivals Watford and asked how his side can improve Bloomfield said: “We’ve gone back and watch them again this week from the whole season and we’ve got to be stronger defensively and we have to finish our chances because we’ve created some big chances against Sheffield United, created some big chances against Plymouth.
“We created big chances. We have to finish them and we have to stay strong defensively. That’s what the game comes down to because, in between the both boxes, I’ve been saying it for weeks now, we’re absolutely fine.
“Sunderland we weren’t so there’s no covering over that. Millwall was a scrappy game, but apart from that we’ve been absolutely fine. But the two boxes make results, not performances.”
He added: “We need to start winning. I’m here to win. We want to win. yeah, we need to we need to start putting performances back to back to back. and if we do that, lost count the amount of number of people involved in football who told me we should have got four or six points from the last two home games, but we didn’t, so we have to do it soon.”
With a six days between the derby day disappointment and tomorrow’s Pompey clash, it’s given Bloomfield more time on the training field to work with his players.
Asked how he can instil more belief in his men, the manager said: “I think there’s different ways. you know, as a modern day coach, you have to use everything you possibly can. Sometimes that is using the data. Sometimes that’s ignoring the data. Sometimes it’s just using your eye, sometimes it’s trying to use the two.
“Sometimes you have to try and be a psychologist, be their friend. But ultimately it comes down to hard work. It’s about having good structure and discipline, defensively and offensively, and running as hard as your opposition. You have to run harder than them. Head, tackle, it’s the basics of the game. We have to do all of those things.”
He added: “The evidence of the two last two home performances would suggest that the boys are in a good spot at home. The evidence that until the penalty was given against us on Sunday, we started fine. We were absolutely fine in the game.
“Of course we had a wobble, but as we’ve spoken about belief and confidence, when you go go behind, away from home in local derbies, it’s not easy. And I also want to stop talking about belief and confidence because the lads don’t want to hear me talking about it. I don’t want to talk about it.
“We want to just work and we want to aim forward and look forward. And so we’ve done that this week. We’ve reviewed the game with the players we’ve prepared for Portsmouth. We’ve worked hard and we’ve trained well this morning, and we have to bring that out tomorrow afternoon.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s here [The Brache] and meetings and training sessions, [it] doesn’t count. Saturday afternoon at the Kenny and we have to turn up tomorrow ready to go.”
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