As the Kenilworth Road faithful endorsed a valiant defeat to a Rasmus Højlund-inspired Manchester United, cheering their manager Rob Edwards as he gave a frustrated lap of appreciation, it’s clear that if Luton do get relegated it will not be through lack of effort, heart and desire.
At present, however, it may be through defensive errors, as Amari’i Bell’s gaffe allowed the United goalscorer to net in 37 seconds and become the youngest-ever player to score in six consecutive Premier League games.
And it got worse before it got much better as Højlund chested an instinctive second on seven minutes.
At that stage, Luton looked on for their first shellacking of the season, but time and again this season they have not given up to the extent of fellow promoted sides Burnley and Sheffield United, both gubbed 5-0 this weekend, and not for the first time.
“I thought we showed really good stuff tonight. We looked like a really good team, I thought,” said Edwards, adding: “I’m proud of many aspects of that performance tonight, especially in a lot of adversity early on.
“Two-nil down, with what had gone against us, you’re thinking, this could be a difficult night. We’ve seen what’s happened this weekend with teams. It can happen at this level. Better teams than us can get hit hard in this league, and that didn’t happen to us.”
The spark of hope came when Carlton Morris headed a deflected Tahith Chong shot past a flailing Onana on 14 minutes and from there Town took United to task, just without making their dominance pay.
Edwards said: “We’re playing against Manchester United, we’ve got to remember that. And remember that I’m really disappointed because we fully believed, going into this game, that we could win today. We really did.
“We showed that in the performance after that first eight to ten minutes, where we were a little bit rocked with what had happened.”
The Red Devils still maintained a significant threat in the counter, but they could not expand on that until the last half an hour.
Before that, the Hatters hoarded the ball – 68 per cent at one high point in the opening period, and 58 per cent overall – with Ross Barkley and the outstanding Sambi Lokonga dictating. Chiedozie Ogbene and Alfie Doughty found joy down the flanks and Morris – the main man after top scorer Elijah Adebayo injured his hamstring in the warm-up – made mincemeat out of Harry Maguire. The England centre half was hooked at half time alongside red card waiting to happen Casemiro, as a sign from United boss Erik ten Hag of just how out-played his team had been, despite their lead.
“Losing your number nine and then going down after 40 seconds is not an ideal way to start against Manchester United, of course. I think it probably wobbled us and rocked us a bit,” said Edwards.
“One-nil turned to 2-0 after about six minutes and I was a little bit fearing the worst, thinking, OK, how are we going to respond to this?
“But I’ve got to give the players a lot of credit. They showed an air of calmness and belief, commitment to the game plan, and dragged themselves onto a really good performance.
“We got back into the game and then pushed and pushed. We couldn’t find the second one but, in the end, there’s lots to like about the performance.
“But you can’t give a team like Manchester United a two-goal head-start that early in the game. We got punished with a couple of errors and it was hard to recover from that.”
But the Hatters had their chances, bombarding United from all angles in a thrilling display of attack-minded verve.
It should have seen them enter the break all square, but Doughty squandered the golden chance, pulling his shot wide of the post with just Onana to beat.
Predictably, after such a thrilling half, Manchester United made changes, steadied the ship and began asking their own questions, but found the impressive Thomas Kaminski with all types of answers. Long shots, one-on-ones, the Belgian keeper repelled them them all.
And when Bruno Fernandes did round him, unlike Garnacho before him, the Portuguese found Lokonga in his way with one of the blocks of the season.
That was pure desire from the Arsenal loanee’s afternoon, balancing out his incisive play and jaw-dropping passing. It takes some player to match Barkley for quality, but Lokonga is more than up to the task, rightly named man-of-the-match.
It should have pointed to Town getting something from the game, but the grandstand finale didn’t come despite cross after cross and set piece after set piece being launched into the United box.
And right at the end, Barkley clipped the top of the bar with a header, but it just wasn’t to be and, again, they were left to rue mistakes at the start and ruminate on a sense of what could have been.
