Luton Town suffered a heartbreaking last-gasp defeat to Premier League leaders Arsenal as Declan Rice headed the winner 23 seconds over the six minutes of time added on.
Luton players slumped to the ground in desperation, while boss Rob Edwards did the rounds, applauding three sides of Kenilworth Road. The Hatters faithful, for a while stunned into silence, roared his name in appreciation at the heart and desire of a performance that deserved something.
After they departed the old stadium and a first encounter with the Gunners for 31 years, perplexed, perhaps, at how Arsenal had snatched a first win in Luton for 39 years, the manager summed up what most fans would’ve been feeling.
“I didn’t really know what to say to the lads afterwards,” he said, adding: “What I did say, I’m proud of them. And not to let that one moment affect us too much. I’ve got to look at the bigger picture.
“They did exactly what we asked of them, gave everything and football is about entertainment. It was an entertaining game.
“My job is to try ands get points as well and we’ve just come up short.”
There are few more sickening ways to experience that. Particularly after such a thrilling and topsy-turvy game, in which Town more than matched the current best team in the land, now five points clear at the summit.
They were 2-1 behind at the break, but they didn’t deserve that either. Gabriel Osho had headed a fine first Premier League goal, but poor defending ultimately cost them either side of that as Gabriel Martinelli and Gabriel Jesus both punished lapses in concentration. This was the only concern, because they were hugely preventable goals. More were to follow.
But first, Elijah Adebayo bagged a leveller to justify his inclusion from the start in place of Carlton Morris, moving level with him as the club’s top scorer this term on three apiece. And for a brief but glorious period, after clear man-of-the-match, Ross Barkley, had opened his Hatters account with a birthday goal, their was hope of a famous 3-2 scoreline against the Gunners. It didn’t last long. Three minutes, in fact.
While both of the host’s first two goals came from Alfie Doughty corners, the third owed almost everything to Barkley, who started and finished a sweeping move, with a little help from David Raya in the Gunners’ goal who let the Liverpudlian’s shot go through him.
Any hopes of a 1988 repeat were quickly extinguished by Kai Havertz’s quick-fire leveller. Again, it was lapse defending that allowed the German in on the hour.
But for the next 30 minutes of regulation time Town defended doggedly. A relatively small six minutes were then added on and the Hatters saw that out too.
But it was not enough. Issa Kaboré committed a naive foul on the halfway line as added time ticked into a seventh minute and from there Rice glanced a header inside the post.
The midfielder cost £105m he moved from West Ham United in the summer at the same time that Luton added 13 new recruits for roughly five times less, including Barkley who, remarkably, cost nothing and already seems like the deal of the century. His 30th birthday was spoiled, while Arsenal celebrated like they’d won the league.
In that reaction, there’s something to take forward for Luton. Tottenham, Liverpool and now the Gunners, none of them have had it easy at Kenilworth Road.
As Edwards said of Arsenal: “I think we made it a really uncomfortable night for them. They want a game of order and control and we tried to make it chaotic.
“We tried to be really aggressive and brave. And then we showed really good quality as well, when we had the ball in the moments that we had it.
“We can take some positivity from it, and we have to. But we know we need to get points as well.”
To achieve that, it’s only the small task of the European champions Manchester City on Sunday. But this performance, if not the result, showed that the Hatters will not fear Erling Haaland and co.
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