It was hardly the home debut of dreams, but Luton boss Graeme Jones said club record signing Simon Sluga didn’t put a foot wrong despite conceding five goals against Norwich on Saturday.
Signed for €1.5million, the Croatian international’s first notable act was to pick the ball out of his net, when Josip Drmic scored in the fourth minute, and he had to repeat the duty two minutes later when City scored again.
Both were the products of poor defending and but even though Drmic then added his second and Norwich’s third, Sluga showed his ability to pull off a top drawer block to initially keep out Todd Cantwell only to see the rebound stroked into an empty net.
Dan Potts pulled one back to make it 3-1 but, moments later, the Canaries went straight up the other end to restore their three goal cushion, with the keeper diving despairingly but unable to get his 6ft 3ins frame near Drmic’s looping header.
Sluga had even less chance with Patrick Roberts’ stunner from outside of the penalty box to complete the rout, though he was still kept busy by the Premier League outfit.
Afterwards Jones said: “He’s done nothing wrong at all. I thought on the ball he was brave. It was a difficult [home] debut today but he’s done nothing wrong at all.
“He makes a save and then the guy [Drmic] puts in the rebound. You look at Patrick Roberts’ effort for the fifth and I don’t think there’s a goalkeeper in the world that would stop that.”
Ryan Tunnicliffe, who also made his Kenilworth Road debut for the Hatters agreed with his manager regards the Sluga’s afternoon.
“He made a few good saves,” the former Millwall midfielder said, adding: “The scoreline suggests otherwise, but I don’t think that he had too much to do. They got a few chances early and was clinical.
“To conceded five in his first game at a new stadium then he’ll be gutted. That’s the type of person he is, but we’ve said in the dressing room we have to dust ourselves off, dissect the game and go again Friday.
“It’s all preparation for the season so it was good to get 90 minutes under our belt against a very good team. It will get the fitness up there because we had to run quite a lot, but a disappointing result. It’s the bigger picture and it’s about minutes.
