Former Hatter Joe Taylor twisted the knife as Luton Town lost a must-win game against relegation candidates Wigan Athletic without a whimper as boss Jack Wilshere admitted, “we haven’t been good enough”.
Until the final action of the game, when the Latics made four determined goal-line clearances in a row, the Hatters had managed just one Kasey Palmer free-kick on target.
Athletic, who had not won on home soil since December 2, hit five of their seven shots on target and should’ve had at least one more goal to their name. The most important of those efforts came in the 73rd minute when Taylor was sent clean through on goal and he made no mistake, dinking over the out-rushing Josh Keeley.
It showed a level of clinical finishing that the Hatters have rarely possessed this season. With recruitment continually under scrutiny from fans, it was a nightmare moment as, not for the first time this term, a former employee deemed surplus to requirements at Kenilworth Road came back to haunt the Hatters.
But more than that, this is a Town team that simply do not know how to scrap, to shoot, to score and to win on the road. And there was also an acceptance from Wilshere that the scrutiny will only intensify.
“There’ll be question marks about about the team, about me,” he admitted on LTFC+. “And we have to stand up. We have to be together. We have to face it because, rightly so, we haven’t been good enough. That’s on me.”
This was Luton’s eighth straight failed attempt at victory on the road, just when they needed to change that wretched run to at least keep up the pretence of a play-off push. They never looked capable of a statement of intent in that direction. In fact, they were, by some distance, second best – giving Wigan their new manager bounce on Gary Caldwell’s return to the dugout.
His opposite number Wilshere even picked two striker strikers in Devante Cole and Ali Al-Hamadi, instead of his preferred one, though bizarrely he left top scorer Gideon Kodua on the bench until the 83rd minute, despite his previous calling as a clutch late goalscorer. Still Town could not fashion meaningful chances.
Afterwards, Wilshere admitted the gamble had backfired.
“We tried something different,” he said. “We tried, playing with two nines. we didn’t execute it well enough. We didn’t use use them well enough. We didn’t use what they’re good at well enough.
“We wanted to generate more threat, from the Cardiff game, and that’s the best way we thought about doing it and we didn’t execute it. We felt like we had more threat. But we have to create better opportunities. We have to be able to execute simple things better.”
The second half, like so many away games this season, drifted away from Luton as Wigan sensed vulnerability where match-winner Taylor had two chances before he made the third one count.
“In the second half, the game got away from us again, where we lost a bit of composure when when they started to become a little bit more aggressive,” Wilshere added. “[It’s a] disappointing night as a group.”
With Huddersfield’s defeat to Doncaster 24 hours earlier having opened the door to close the gap on the play-off places, Wilshere did not shy away from describing it as a significant setback.
“It feels like then a missed opportunity,” he said as his side slipped five points off the pace, adding: “We of course were aware of the results last night. We were watching it, watching the games and watching the results come in and we felt like this was an opportunity. So for me, it’s an opportunity missed and a big opportunity as well.”
Where do Luton go from here? Given that they’ve now lost 13 in the league, which is as many as they’ve won, the sensible money would be on nowhere fast as mid-table mediocrity seems their limit.
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