Luke Berry studied Izzy Brown to see how to cut it as a number ten in the Championship while he was sat on the sidelines for Luton.
The midfielder made his long-awaited first Championship start at the weekend as Town came from behind to beat Wigan 2-1, and he kept his place for Tuesday’s disappointing 3-0 defeat at Stoke.
Berry made 24 appearances in last term’s League One title-winning campaign but has found appearances harder to come by in the Championship, with just four. And he didn’t feature at all for more than two months between his outing at Blackburn on September 28 and Saturday’s Wigan game.
Chelsea loan ace Izzy Brown was the first choice for the number 10 role, but his hamstring injury in the 7-0 drubbing at Brentford will keep him out for 10 weeks, so there’s a position up for grabs, which both Berry and George Moncur will be eyeing, having had little involvement so far this term.
With Moncur his lack of action has been down to defensive deficiencies, while Berry says he has had to better understand the attacking and defensive roles.
He said: “In the ten, sometimes you don’t even need to move at times, just stay in the space and look where you are. Izzy Brown’s fantastic at it. Everyone can see it. It has been good watching him and understanding that role.
“He works all the time, works hard but at times he doesn’t even move. He understands where to move, or just drift off their defensive midfielder.
“It does help me at times because I’ve played defensive midfield, so I know what annoys me when I’m playing against a number ten. I can do what he does, if that makes sense, because I’ve played that position in the DM.
“I know what hurts me as a defensive midfield and what I can do to him, so it’s just learning different things like that.”
Berry did perform well as a defensive midfielder when deployed there for Luton’s 3-0 EFL Cup win at Cardiff in August, and the 27-year-old has spent his time in the sidelines studying how Martin Cranie operates there.
“With the defensive midfield position, sometimes you need to drop into the back three of maybe a back four, so it’s things like that,” Berry said of positioning.
“It’s helped me watching and seeing other players, Cranie do it and a few others, just to understand what position you need to be in defensively.
“It’s not working ten or 15 yards, sometimes it’s working five yards quickly to understand and block different situations.”
And having progressed with Luton from League Two to the Championship in the space of 18 months, Berry admits the step up has come with more need to understand the tactical side of the game.
“You can see when you’re watching that there’s more tactical battles in the game,” he said, adding: “It’s what makes it a win or makes it a draw. You can see there are more battles, tactically more often than in League One or League Two.
“The gaffer has definitely put it across as he’s telling us different formations, different structures in the formation and what we can do to help us win a game.
“It has improved from League Two to League One to the Championship. It’s going to because we’re playing harder teams. We’re playing stronger opponents, so we have to improve the level, it just makes sense, so that’s what he’s done.”
