What a difference a week makes. For a Luton team that looked to have turned a corner these last seven days, they disastrously snapped back to the passive, fragile team with a predilection for self-destruction to steal defeat from the jaws of victory at Coventry.
Town led 2-0 half time, admittedly against the run of play, with a penalty from Carlton Morris and a second in two games from Elijah Adebayo. But nothing they did stopped the Sky Blue tide and they shipped three second half goals, with Haji Wright supplying the late, controversial killer strike.
“Right now, it’s obviously difficult walking off the pitch when we’ve lost the game of football after being in such a good position to take something from it. Absolutely, right now, very deflated,” said boss Rob Edwards.
It’s an all too familiar feeling. Three minutes before Wright struck the winner, Tom Holmes had been sent off for a silly second bookable offence and a deserving City made them pay.
Joel Latibeaudiere appeared to be in an offside position and interfering with a swipe at a ball that Thomas Kaminski could only palm onto a plate for Wright on the line in the second minute of added time.
Alfie Doughty, way out on the flank, may potentially have been playing Latibeaudiere onside, but without VAR, it’s one for debate and frustration, especially days after Town were denied a goal for a similar action in defeat to Sunderland in midweek.
But regardless of that, this was a colossal capitulation, that looked worryingly preordained as soon as Coventry’s Ellis Simms’ header halved the deficit just before the hour mark.
It’s a feeling and an inevitable outcome that has blighted the entirety of 2024 in two separate divisions, now leaving them perilously close the foot of the Championship. There just appears no confidence that a two-goal lead can possibly be enough.
“Ultimately, I’ll own it. Two-nil up and we lost the game 3-2. That can’t happen,” said Edwards. But it did, and it has too many times. It’s a persistent Groundhog Day, grinding away at the Hatters.
So it was no surprise when Victor Torp levelled on 76 minutes was a stunning strike. But he was only allowed to curl in from 18 yards because no Luton player was anywhere near him. It was a concerning feature of Town’s entire game.
From two aggressive displays this week, that yielded only half the points they deserved, at the Ricoh Arena they were the complete opposite and could not get close to the Sky Blues.
It looked like three games of high-intensity football was considerably beyond them, because the midfield may as well not have been there, with the ease that City – who you wouldn’t have known were in poor form themselves – ran and passed through them, like they had worn the similarly coloured shirts of Manchester City instead.
Edwards told Sky Sports: “(There are) still too many moments where we were open. We gave them that glimmer from a set piece where, again, it’s on us. It’s on me.
“Two-one, then the crowd obviously really get behind them. More intensity. We tried to introduce changes early to have an effect. but in the end we’ve not defended well enough, and I’ll completely own it. We can’t be 2-0 up and then lose the game, 3-2.”
Again, they can and they have. And the last-gasp sickener was of little to surprise, slingshotting Luton back to the all too recent bad old days of if it can go wrong, it will.
As well as this dispiriting result, the repercussions already have their claws in the next fixture. Not only will Holmes be suspended for Friday’s visit of West Bromwich Albion, Doughty will be too. The wing back was bafflingly carded – his fifth of the season – for trying taking a free-kick too early.
What also now appears frustratingly premature is the notion that Luton had rediscovered their old selves in the performances of the last two games.
Perhaps, given that Town keep conceding leads, the displays against Watford and Sunderland were the exception, and, maybe, worryingly, this was the real Hatters.
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