Luton Town’s stuttering League One campaign showed little sign of lifting at Vale Park as a 1-1 draw with bottom club Port Vale extended their winless run on the road and left frustration lingering among the travelling support.
In a game widely viewed as a must win against the division’s basement side, the Hatters started brightly and took the lead in the fifth minute through Nahki Wells. But they conceded a Ben Waine leveller just before the break, after which they failed to assert themselves as the contest drifted into a direct, attritional battle.
And, but for two big saves from Josh Keeley Luton could have come away with nothing. The point at least ended a run of six straight defeats on their travels, but for a side still hoping to sneak into the play-off picture, that was not sufficient.
Afterwards, Town manager Jack Wilshere pointed to a familiar issue he believes is holding his side back.
“I still feel like there’s a lack of belief and lack of confidence when when that happens and it gets tough and we can’t quite find that that right pass or the right moment to change the rhythm,” he told the BBC.
“Sometimes you do and you get Shayden [Morris] on and you know what Shayden is going to do. He’s going to get to the byline and stand it up and we haven’t got enough numbers in the box. That’s the reality, right?
“The players, for me, are good enough. Definitely. I just think it’s the belief thing and I know people will probably get bored of hearing it, but that is the reality. That’s the reality of where we’re at and we have to try, somehow, to get out of it.
“The positive is we lost six in a row away from home before this. We didn’t lose today. which is when you’re really reaching for a positive, that’s what it is. But we have to keep going like that and keep finding little positives and little moments that gives us more belief and more confidence.”
Pressed on why the same issues continue to resurface away from home, Wilshere said: “We can’t do it consistently, I would say. And I don’t know why. We have to keep going, keep pushing the players, keep putting them under pressure to do it and show them the right way to do it and give them the freedom to do it.”
Vale’s equaliser came from a direct phase of play, something Wilshere felt his side should have handled better.
“We’ve been really good, in my opinion, at dealing with direct play, but you can see from the goal, we couldn’t quite get the first contact, but also the second balls today, we weren’t good enough with it.”
And the second half brought more frustration, which is another familiar theme, as Wilshere conceded: “We didn’t do enough in the second half I wanted us to be braver and especially in the first half after our goal, I think we can keep our foot down and keep pushing them and keep pushing them back and getting behind them and mixing it up sometimes, to find Clicker [Jordan Clark] or find Jake [Richards] and then attack that way or get behind them directly, which we stopped doing. And then they came back into the game.
“In the second half I felt like there was just one rhythm. We couldn’t change the tempo or we couldn’t mix it up a little bit. And that’s where we’re at. We have to look at it on Monday, we have to show the players it because we need to get better at it.”
Despite more dropped points, and no league wins in four, which leaves them five points off the top six and Huddersfield, with a game in hand on the Terriers, Wilshere insists the bigger picture is not settled.
“We keep believing,” he said when asked about the play-offs. “You see this league, Huddersfield lost to Wigan today. Reading came back in the 90th minute and scored two goals. So anything can happen.
“We’ll keep going. I don’t want to talk about that with the players. Right in this moment, I believe we have to take each game as it comes. And it’s this next game. The next game is on Wednesday. Slightly different context, it’s the semi-final [of the Vertu Trophy]. Semi-finals are there just to win and that’s as simple as that, and then Reading at home on the weekend, which will be a big game.”
But with more boos from the 1.200 travelling Town fans at the final whistle, it’s another disappointing result that does little to quieten concerns about Luton’s inability to achieve their ultimate goal of promotion while belief remains elusive.
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