Manager Rob Edwards says his Luton players have “accepted” his angry public criticisms of the mistakes which caused defeat at Norwich last week.
The manager rarely, if at all, deflects the blame for poor results away from himself, but he slammed players for their “massive” blunders that saw the Hatters slump to a 4-2 defeat at Carrow Road.
It was Town’s sixth straight defeat on the road, seeing them slump to 19th in the Championship and Edwards in his post-match interviews called out his men, saying: “People have got to fix it quickly, otherwise they won’t play.”
He’s now had a week with the squad to pick over the bones of their errors and prepare a team to face Swansea at home tomorrow, though he has admitted some “freakish” injuries had hampered preparations.
“They know,” Edwards said of the culprits at Norwich, and expanded on his approach to address the problems, saying: “Sometimes you’ve got to judge it. Sometimes it might be the individuals, sometimes it might be in front of the whole group.
“The way we went about it this week was with the whole group because there was multiple, there’s a few people involved and in the end, they just need to know because it’s not something that really we want to be able to accept
“We’re human beings, we will make mistakes but decision-making and the way we conceded was not really acceptable.
“They’ve been good. I think they accepted it. They’ve been mature about it and dealt with in the way that I expected them to. They’ve worked hard. The environment, the place has still being lively and not down. No-one’s been sulking or moaning about it. I’ve seen people stand up and want to try to take action, so we want to see that in performance tomorrow.”
Edwards says he’s seen a desire in his players during training this week to put right the mistakes, but asked if he’s had to have difficult conversations with players this week, he said: “No, not particularly. We’ve done it as a group really and tried to, not put it to bed (because) we’ve got to learn from it, but it was a it was a group meeting where we could, highlight some of that stuff.
“But also, again, I’ve got to repeat, some of the stuff that was that was good. Everyone wants to focus on the mistakes because, that’s what cost us, but within the game as well, there was some, some good things. It was just honesty, that was all, and people have responded in the right way.
“So, no, not difficult conversations. I think having those honest chats are always, I think, beneficial. Don’t there’s any point in hiding behind things, and people need to know what I’m thinking and how I’m feeling. And, that’s how I try to work anyway.”
Luton have now conceded more away goals in 18 games than they did in the entirety of the promotion-winning campaign two seasons ago.
Discussing his assessment of why there have been so many mistakes, particularly away from Kenilworth Road, Edwards said: “I think it’ll be because there’s an inconsistency in form and results. Obviously confidence is lacking a little bit then and then that can lead to indecision and some basic errors. So that’s all I can really put it down to.
“What you don’t want is a day like that last week where too many of them crept in. The opportunities that they (Norwich) had, or the goals that they scored, all came from things that were avoidable. Pretty big things.
“It’s difficult then sometimes to really understand that and why, especially when we started the game pretty well and gone 1-0 up. We looked we looked OK, we looked pretty comfortable. And again at 2-2. So it’s difficult always to put your finger on that, even when you review the game. You look at it and think, ‘OK, the overall performance there was pretty good. The ideas were good, and unfortunately we got punished for some basic errors.”
With confidence such a key factor, it’s one of the more abstract issues to address and Edwards said: “I’ve felt a few times, oh, we got it, we’re back, we’ve found a rhythm here, and then it’s just something’s locked us again,” he said.
“It’s difficult to put your finger on that, the confidence and belief. A positive mindset is good and trying to think positively and talking. Positive body language, those sorts of things, the things that we can talk about and think about. And then positive messages, clarity in our message and how we’re working in terms of a plan, what we want to try and do, where we want to try and play.
“You can’t be hypercritical of people because we don’t want to floor people, but at the same time, there’s going to be a degree of honesty there. And what we need to see more of and where we need to be better as well.
“But it is really difficult to just sort of click your fingers and find that. It’s hard because if we know the exact reason, we’d be able to just amend it and we’d have picked up the results by now. It’s difficult to say after the after the defeat the other day.
“But when you do look at the game back and when I did review it and you look at it in the cold light of day, take the emotion out of it as well, it was pretty good against the good team.
“The errors that we made just stand out and obviously affect everybody’s thoughts on it and feelings on it, which I get, but obviously we’ve got to try and look at it in a bit of a different way and look at individual performances and the team as a collective and as a whole.
“I thought we found a really good way of being aggressive, but also, not being as open, and then we definitely looked more of a threat than we had done in midweek against Leeds as well.
“We created some decent opportunities and there was a decent balance there. It wasn’t perfect, I know that, but it was a it was a step in the right direction I feel from where some of those, those away performances have been.
“But it is very difficult to be able to say, that’s exactly what we need to do because if we had the exact answer we’d be able to do it straightaway.
“We’ve tried a number of different ways, slightly different types of pressing. All out, a little bit more mid, kind of in between on the weekend and (we’ve had) similar sorts of results, not necessarily similar performances. So I think there was a bit of a step in the right direction last week.”
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