Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu admitted his goal celebration was a direct response to Wycombe Wanderers’ time-wasting after his first strike of the season broke the deadlock and set Luton up for victory.
The midfielder fired in from outside the box on 59 minutes after a tough encounter with the Chairboys in the first ever season in the Championship, with Elliot Lee putting the seal on victory with his first the campaign too.
The Buckinghamshire outfit are well-known for their tactics and that included making Town wait to start the second half, with their players emerging late from the tunnel.
Once he’d curled home, Mpanzu pointed to an imaginary watch on his wrist and he said afterwards: “They try to come and slow the game down and if they do that and you score first, you’re going to get punished and I was like, ‘listen, doing come and waste time and we score and now you’re trying to hurry your game up’.
“You can’t waste time. Come to the Kenny and we’re going to punish you and that’s what we did.
“It’s all tactical. It’s a tactical game football, so you’ve got to keep your mind right, keep your mind straight and, listen, we handled that well, with professionalism and we came out with the win.”
Manager Nathan Jones joked that the midfielder’s shooting often ends up “in Bury Park”, while Mpanzu has said in the past that he only scores “bangers”, but the was more than an element of control in his 18th goal for the club.
He said: “People think (I’m) blazing squad and there’s a couple of members in there (dressing room) but I’ve left now. Listen, I’ve finessed it, the keeper is clutching at air and it’s a great goal, hopefully I get more this season.
“It didn’t go quite in the top corner, but I’ll take every goal that I can get.”
The victory against the winless, goalless Wanderers was Luton’s third in the opening three games of the league season, putting them in the play-off places, going into the International break.
Talking on the club’s iFollow platform, Mpanzu said: “We’ll take nine points. It’s a great start and hopefully after the international break we continue that.”
