An apologetic Sonny Bradley admitted that the Luton players have taken full responsibility for the club’s worst league defeat since 1966, with the 7-0 drubbing at Brentford.
Dan Potts’ howler gifted the Bees a sixth minute opener, but Town then capitulated in the final 15 minutes of the first half, with the Londoners putting four past them for a 5-0 lead at the break.
Two penalties were conceded in the second period, as the Hatters had to play on for the final half an hour with just ten men after Brendan Galloway was stretchered off with a serious knee injury. Before that, Izzy Brown also limped off with a torn hamstring.
Captain Bradley said of the result and the performance: “It was shocking to be fair. Firstly before I go any further, we owe the fans an apology today. I want to give them that, from all of the players. That’s not good enough for Luton Town Football Club.
“In the 18 months I’ve been here now it’s the worst I’ve felt and probably the worst performance I’ve been a part of, so I want to apologise for that firstly.
“The first five minutes I thought we actually settled into the game very well and there was a mix-up obviously with Pottsy and Sheasy. You can’t come away to Brentford and give them goals like that.
“That’s happened too often this season, myself on Tuesday – I made a mistake and all of a sudden we go 1-0 down and our backs are against the wall. Fortunately at home, with the fans right behind us, we gathered a bit of momentum back and managed to beat Charlton whereas today, Brentford were on it today.
“They were playing really well and after they went 1-0, it was a snowball effect and we couldn’t seem to work out between us how they were getting in so easily and how they were getting so many chances.
“Before you know it against good teams, you’re 5-0 down at half-time and it’s game over. You just want the floor to swallow you up, but there is no excuse, we’re not going to give any excuses.”
Boss Graeme Jones, in his post-match press conference, also apologised to fans and said that the players wanted him to tell the media that they were fully responsible.
Bradley confirmed that, saying: “Since I’ve been at this club, the boys have taken responsibility for our performances and just seeing the manager go off at the end then and getting booed, that’s really difficult to take for us as players because he’s picked the same team for the last three games and that performance wasn’t there against Leeds, and that performance wasn’t there against Charlton, so why was it there today?
“The manager has given us a game plan, going into the game we knew what we were doing and tactically we felt good. We didn’t execute those tactics and it has ended up being an embarrassing day for the boys and an embarrassing day for the football club, which is hard to take.
“The Leeds game we played the same, Charlton game we played the same. Today we’ve come here and because of the last two games we felt comfortable in the formation we were playing, but for whatever reason, a sloppy start and the snowball effect with the goal, we’re suddenly five-nil down at half-time and it’s embarrassing. The manager didn’t deserve that from us.”
