Luton suffered another poor defeat against Birmingham on Saturday when they paid the price for a sloppy display at St Andrew’s. Here is what we could take from the loss.
- Defeat offers a reality check
Brilliant form from the beginning of December has understandably got all supporters of the Town dreaming of what might be over the remainder of the season, with a spot in the play-offs perfectly achievable. That doesn’t change with one defeat but if it tempers expectation a little and reminds everyone of the factors that Luton are up against in their chase for the play-offs, then it might be no bad thing. Ultimately, as good as this season has been, Nathan Jones’ men still have to ensure they do the basics and get a foothold in a match to be able to pick up anything from it. After a bright opening 20 minutes, once Birmingham took the lead the ship started taking on water and things unravelled quickly from there to become a poor day at the office.
2. Improvement is obvious but there is one last hurdle to master
There is no doubt that the team have improved beyond trace since they returned to the Championship but there is one Achilles heel which continues to prove a stumbling block and that is finding a way to impose themselves on a direct side. It is quite a statistic that in all 12 league wins this season Luton have not enjoyed more of the ball than their opposition but when teams let them have the ball and get tough and physical with them the Hatters stars are not yet able to impose themselves on a game and come away with three points. Possession probably isn’t a statistic that is high up on the mind of a coach, as the score naturally influences who has more of the football, but with two teams coming up in West Brom and Stoke who will follow the blueprint of letting Luton have more of the ball, it is something that Jones will hope his charges can rectify. Luton can now win games at this level without being at their best and if they can find a way of getting results when dominating the ball they really will be the finished article at this level.
3. New balls please!
The UK is no stranger to a protest at present with a new march taking place somewhere in the country seemingly every day at the minute and Birmingham fans decided to add their weight to the trend. I like a good protest as much as the next person, especially when supporters are not being listened to by their owners, and having heard in advance that the home fans were going to be staging theirs during the game I watched on with interest. It turns out that this protest involved fans throwing a tennis ball onto the pitch to stop play, which was a new one on me, even though it has happened on the continent previously. As it turned out, only about 30-40 fans decided to turn St Andrew’s into Centre Court at Wimbledon so I’m not convinced that will have had much effect on what they were trying to achieve. It did however stop the Town in their stride as a steward inexplicably marched onto the field to retrieve one of the unwanted additional balls while Elijah Adebayo was about to roll the ball into the box in the hope a teammate would open the scoring. Head in hands all round!
4. 80s pop songs make great chants!
I guess it says everything about what we saw on the pitch that the final takeaway is about what happened off it as more 80s numbers got converted into songs by the visiting supporters. Kal Naismith has been the beneficiary of one such song being remodelled to show the Hatters’ love for their man as the Belinda Carlisle track ‘Heaven is a place on earth’ has been sung a few times to the adjusted version. There were a few renditions of that at St Andrew’s and joining that tune on the Town karaoke were the Eurythmics classic ‘Sweet Dreams’ with James Bree enjoying the love from that one, as well as Blondie’s (or Atomic Kitten if you’re young or a lover of shocking covers) ‘The Tide is High’ with James Shea serenaded as the Hatters’ number one. All three are canny numbers and hopefully they continue to catch on and retire less needed chants, such as the one for Carlos Mendes-Gomes, to the bin
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If poor little snowflakes dont like the chants then dont come – its a simple as that! Kids hear worse language in their playgrounds and from their parents swearing at them.
Ha… well done for coming out I guess.
No one is saying you can’t swear though…
You support racism, homophobia and sexism? That’s not bad language. That just being a twat. You walk around at work telling gay colleagues they’re sex offenders? Got HIV or AIDS? Black colleagues that they’ve got huge murderous dicks? Or women that they’re whores or will get killed by big dicks? Do it at the supermarket either? Or do you not have the bollocks to do it there because you know you’d be on the dole or in a cell come the morning?
Or maybe you want to hide behind the “I don’t do it. I just think it’s fine for others to do it” argument. You the kind of person that sees someone being insulted for being black, gay or a woman and just walks by? I guess it is easier that doing the right thing…
Racist, homophobic, sexist snowflakes that can’t accept being told the world isn’t there’s any more are the one’s that need to be booted out of our club yesterday. It’s as simple as that…
Yup, the CMG one is disgusting and all the worse given they’ve proven there’s some wit amongst em with the other 3. Retire that, the Pelly one and the gay bashing Elton ones. Oh and Toby Thorpe’s mum has earned a rest too. Come up with some other funnier ones based on 70s and 80s pop tunes.
But on the positive, the Brum fans got applauded for their protest once they made it clear what it was about. And there was no bother walking out the ground this time.
Can’t win ‘em all. Deserved nowt and wouldn’t have scored if we’d played till today. Yes definitely good to temper the play off expectations. But there’s always next week!
We have been getting worse and worse over the last few weeks and got some lucky wins finally the wheels fell of the bus. NJ has to pick players that perform not so called Legends that underperform week on week as demonstrated by their SofaScores. Legends that give the ball away nearly 20 times a game and who have never been in the team of the week.