Carlton Morris admitted that Luton’s last day 5-3 battering at West Bromwich Albion was an “awful day” but that it was the team’s poor early season form which ultimately led to a second successive relegation.
The Hatters came to The Hawthorns knowing that victory would keep them in the Championship, but other permutations could also see them to safety after two months and 11 games where six victories and three draws had given Town the momentum to attack the final game. Indeed, after the two already promoted teams, Leeds and Burnley, Luton were the form team in the division.
But it was a day where old wounds were ruthlessly reopened and everything went wrong. They were 3-1 down at half time and by the hour mark, the Baggies had added two more so the game was over.
Jordan Clark and Millenic Alli, who’d levelled at 1-1, scored second half consolations, but by then Luton fans were already glued to phones, hoping that Hull City would lose at Portsmouth to save their skins. They didn’t.
“What an awful day today and it’s been a it’s been a terrible season, all things considered,” Morris said.
The captain had departed at half time with a back injury, after a disastrous collective 45 minutes that Luton’s recent form had hinted was a thing of the past.
He said: “It was just signs of the sort of form that got us into this mess, really. I’m not too sure where that came from. The lads have dug so deep in the last few weeks and whether it’s an energy output thing or the emotion of the day drained it, I’m honestly not sure. I have no idea.
“But what’s done is done. Now, we, we need to move on, obviously grieve for a bit, but focus turns to next season.
“We’ve obviously given ourselves too big of a mountain to climb, unfortunately. Ultimately, today could have gone better. But you know, not putting too much onus on just today, it was the earlier season form that got us into this mess. And, we’ve obviously given ourselves to too big a mountain to climb.”
Asked if the club underestimated the effect of relegation from the Premier League, Morris said: “Oh, yeah. You could you could rattle off six or seven contributing factors to what led us to the position we are now, for sure. It’s unfortunate. Obviously, I’m not going to go into detail on that. But you know, it is what it is. We need to we need to get our heads on next season.”
That will be as a League One side, which two years after winning an historic promotion to the top flight, was virtually unthinkable, but now a harsh reality.
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