As we head into the month of April, as a Luton fan there is so much to look forward to and be excited about.
With 50 points already on the board we can look forward to another season of Championship football. We found out a couple of weeks ago that if everything goes to plan we will have a new stadium in three years and recent evidence suggests that on the pitch we are heading back to the diamond formation which has brought us so much success over the last five years.
Since we came up to the Championship there has been this search for the optimum formation which would allow us to be defensively stable but still offer a threat at the other end.
Under Graeme Jones the scoring goals bit was fine but keeping them out was not happening until late on in his reign.
Since Nathan Jones’ return we have been defensively sound but not quite as free flowing. In that time we have constantly switched between 4-3-3 or 4-5-1 formations and a three at the back one, all with success but never with that potent goal flow.
I imagine the plan was always to go back to the diamond eventually once Championship status was established. I say this because it is the formation which brought us so much success in recent times and the one Nathan Jones is synonymous with. The addition of Elijah Adebayo would further lead me to believe that was the case.
This was confirmed by first team coach Chris Cohen in early March, when he provided this outlook ahead of the Nottingham Forest match.
“The success that the football club’s had over the last three or four years, playing that formation, has obviously been clear for everyone to see. Now, would we love to get to a point where we could always play a diamond, and playing exactly as we did in League Two and League One.”
That has actually been developed on the pitch in the last month. If you wanted to you could argue that it was forced upon us after a terrible first half display when utilising three at the back against Sheffield Wednesday, but however it came about, the return of the diamond is not only appreciated from a supporter enjoyment point of view, but it has had an immediate effect.
If we include the Sheffield Wednesday turnaround, the move to the diamond has delivered four wins in the four matches it has been used, albeit it wasn’t used throughout the win over Coventry.
Although there are still a few areas of the formation to be fine-tuned, immediately this squad of players look more comfortable and confident within it, and we shouldn’t forget this is without three regular members of the back four missing.
That bodes well for the last nine games of the season, and after another summer of recruitment, for next season as well.
That gives us Town fans yet another thing to be extremely excited about as we move forward!
