Luton’s nightmare week added another horror chapter when they blew the chance of three points in injury-time against struggling Burton as Kenilworth Road turned toxic and boss Jack Wilshere pleaded with fans for unity.
On the back of double defeats, Nahki Wells’ fifth of the season should have been just enough for victory, though the manner of it would have left lots to be desired.
But the Brewers, who hadn’t managed a shot on target, piled on the pressure in the final stages and two minutes into seven added at the end, with the Hatters nervously hanging on, Davy van den Berg and Joe Johnson got in a mix-up when trying to clear.
That saw Udoka Godwin-Malife afforded the freedom of Luton’s penalty area – despite it being rammed full of bodies – and he picked out Fabio Tavares to head in at the back post. After the week that was, against a team that had lost their last five away games, it felt all too predictable.
As were the boos from the furious Town fans. They first emerged 97 seconds into the game, though Wells’ goal quelled any escalation, but once the equaliser hit the net, the jeers only intensified as their team did little to correct the scoreline, matching their output across most of the 90 minutes.
Two shots on target was all the hosts registered, but you’d be hard pressed to remember the other one beyond Joe Johnson’s assist for the opener. Burton were, until the closing stages, no better, so the Luton academy graduate should have at least celebrated victory and a man-of-the-match gong on his 20th birthday. Boos rather than booze will be the memory.
At the final whistle, captain Kal Naismith appeared to get in a row with someone from the stands, as the players left the pitch, which needed Wilshere to pull him back from getting into a confrontation.
“I understand their frustrations. I do. I’ve said that a lot. But right now, we need them,” Wilshere said of the supporters’ reaction, adding: “It’s not for a lack of the players trying, for giving everything. They give everything every single day.
“We work really, really hard to try and win games, to try and make supporters happy. The week we’ve had, I think you can see that the players are really lacking belief, they’re lacking confidence.
“It’s difficult then, when in the first minute, there’s booing, because we’re trying to create an identity. We’re trying to create a way of playing that we want to move forward with, which we’ve done really well, I think.
“Some games, I think we’ve been excellent. We need to be more consistent. Cardiff wasn’t good enough. Wigan wasn’t good enough. We understand that. But right now everyone needs to be together. Everyone needs to stick together.
“We have to accept where we are. We’re in League One. That’s happened. I understand where the club was. I understand that the supporters want to get back there, but we have to accept that we’re in League One and that’s the challenge, and we have no right just to turn up and win games and expect that we can just do that because we can’t.
“You can clearly see that, at the moment, that is not the case, and I doubt at any level that is the case, and especially at this level.
“I look at teams that will come down from the Championship. This is a tough league where you have to fight for every single thing you get, every single thing to get a point to get three points, to win a duel, whatever it is. And we’re trying to do that and I think you can see that in the performance today from the players.”
Holding on for victory, may have lent itself to those concessions, but there was no denying the fury from fans at the end.
Wilshere also stopped to hear what one fan had to say near the tunnel, but once the players and staff had taken their leave, the Main Stand turned its attention to the board, calling for heads to roll.
The impression was that the united front that was Luton Town Football Club for the best part of ten years, up to and including in the Premier League three years ago, has gone.
The fans’ reaction was the most visceral signal yet that, in the hearts and minds of many inside Kenilworth Road, that Luton are deep in the midst of a winter of discontent – one which they thought they’d left behind in the Conference.
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