The more things change, the more they stay the same. Luton were 2-1 up at half time but capitulated, with every single Oxford goal Oxford a defensive calamity and Greg Leigh’s catastrophically unmarked winner proving fatal.
It ensured an 11th straight Championship away defeat, a 12th in all competitions. One more and the Hatters will equal their worst-ever run of 13 away defeats. That’s a problem for another day. For now, Luton remain in the bottom three and the reasons why completely undermined clear improvements elsewhere on the pitch.
The small progress achieved in manager Matt Bloomfield’s debut day on Saturday and for half of this game? Overshadowed.
But this was not on the Hatters boss. At the weekend, he looked to have instilled a newfound defensive solidity in just three days with the club, by restricting Preston to zero shots on target, though they were mind-numbingly unadventurous. But at the Kassam Stadium, his players reverted to a team hardwired for self-destruction, long before he arrived last week.
“There’s some good stuff. It doesn’t matter when we lose games and concede goals like we did. It doesn’t matter because ultimately the game is about results – and I’m here to win,” said Bloomfield, who is still waiting for his first as Luton boss.
“It’s frustrating because there was some good elements, but we’ve come away with nothing because we have to defend our box better
“It’s very disappointing. The game will never change. the two 18-yard boxes are the most important areas of the pitch. You have to defend one end with your life, and you have to stick the ball in the net at the other end.
“That’s what the game comes down to. We scored two good goals tonight and (I’m) really pleased with those but, ultimately, we didn’t defend our goal well enough. And if you do that, then you’re not going to win.”
Despite fresh new ideas, old problems run deep and the manager may not have enough fingers to plug the never decreasing number of holes in his side’s defensive dike. It’s not formations. It’s not tactics. Those elements that the manager can effect, have been evident and promising, but they’ll only go so far if his defenders do not do the basics.
Bloomfield, the board and Town’s recruitment team now face a crucial final two weeks of the transfer window. If the players available cannot cut out the mistakes, then reinforcements are desperately needed, with fans already fearing that League One – via back-to-back relegations – beckons.
Until the window shuts on February 3, Bloomfield will have his work cut out in the market and on the training pitches at The Brache.
“It’s the only way to do it,” he told the BBC, adding: “We’ve got to get the training ground. We’ve got to work. We’ve got to keep working. We’ve got to do the basics. Any successful winning football team does the basics well and we have to do the basics better.”
The trouble is, it has been more than an entire calendar year with little evidence that they can master those tasks with any consistency.
This should have been a night to talk about a better shape, more cohesive build-up play – largely in a dominant first half, admittedly – an early Tom Krauß rocket to open the scoring and, then when Michal Helik levelled, Mark McGuinness restoring the lead four minutes later, having assisted the first.
The former Cardiff centre half’s back stick header was clawed off the line but goal-line technology did its thing and Town took that lead into half time. It was, on the whole, all very encouraging.
Oxford had barely threatened, bar one fairly comfortable save from Thomas Kaminski, but even so the signs of destruction were there in Helik’s equaliser. Tom Holmes wasn’t close enough to a fellow defender and the Pole finished with a scissor-kick style volley that even Town’s forwards do not currently seem capable of.
United built up some momentum after the interval, but they still struggled to prise apart two banks of four. They didn’t need to in the end. Instead, Ciaron Brown, another defender, beat Daiki Hashioka and Holmes to a corner and flicked home a leveller on the hour. It was too easy.
And ten minutes later the inevitable hat-trick of misery was complete when there wasn’t a single Hatter close to Leigh, who aimed an unchallenged header into the corner of Kaminski’s net.
It was negligent defending, just when the hosts had clawed their way back into a game that, at the midway point, was threatening to be a turning point for Town. The fabled new manager bounce, was a possibility. Now, a decent honeymoon period, seems less so because, while the greatest fairytale in football got Town to the Premier League, happy ever afters have all but been written out of their current story.
“I’m not going to come out here and start pointing fingers. That’s not the way I am,” said Bloomfield on the mistakes the cost Luton.
“But, ultimately, when the ball comes in our box, we have to defend it. We have to get first contacts. We have to be marking. We have to have the right number of bodies between the posts to defend the crosses. And we’ve got the training ground. Will work.”
To his credit, once Leigh gobbled up Luton’s gift, Bloomfield made an immediate quadruple substitution, changing front three Elijah Adebayo, Isiah Jones and Zack Nelson for Carlton Morris, Jacob Brown and the long-awaited return of Alfie Doughty, while Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu replaced Krauß.
Doughty was a positive, but his team-mates must have forgotten that he is handy with a cross, as none got near his efforts. They did, however, stray offside, misplace passes, commit needless fouls, stop momentum in its tracks and, ultimately, find no answer to the rinse and repeat of stealing defeat from the jaws of victory.
Perhaps it was under the kitchen sink, that wasn’t once thrown in anger at Oxford in the final 20 minutes. The confidence, perhaps even the nous, just isn’t there.
“We need to get the first one (win), and we need to get that on the board. And then belief and confidence will start to grow from there. But we have to get the first one first,” said Bloomfield.
It’s easier said than done.
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