Eight days on from defeat at Stevenage and Luton manager Jack Wilshere believes his side’s approach to the clash was fundamentally right despite admitting they could have been more progressive and had greater quality in the final third.
The Hatters were beaten 2-1 at the SPORTA Arena last Thursday in a game where the manager was sent off, so could not conduct any post-match press, though he said that the decisions — where a foul and offside were missed — for the two Stevenage goals were “were unacceptable”.
Despite that, Wilshere feels that Town had done enough to win, despite creating relatively few clear-cut opportunities. Luton dominated possession for long periods, with Wilshere explaining that circulating the ball across the back three was intended to create opportunities further forward rather than simply accumulate passes.
Some criticism of the performance from fans in the days since was that the match was not much different to the last trip to Stevenage, which was a 2-0 defeat that led to the removal of Matt Bloomfield as boss, though Wilshere is secure in his position.
“I don’t think it’s the same as the last time. I don’t think it’s the same game. I don’t think we watched the same game,” Wilshere said. “I think there are certain things that we wanted out of the game. Were we too slow at times? Yes.
“However, I use the analogy to the players before the game — I’m a dad of four and sometimes when I go home and walk in the house, it’s absolute chaos because my kids are climbing on tables, they’re throwing things everywhere. And the best way that I go in and try and deal with that is by being calm and trying to take control of the situation. So we knew what we had to do in the game.”
Wilshere rejected the suggestion that Luton’s possession was an indication of a lack of attacking intent, pointing instead to the purpose behind their passing.
“Passes, for us, is not success,” he said. “We don’t come in here, we don’t sit in here with the players and say, ‘Yeah, well done lads, we had 500 and whatever passes.’
“We want control, we want possession, but we want it with purpose. The game before, I think we had maybe 300 and something passes but we had 25 shots on goal. So that’s success for us.”
He also explained why Luton were prepared to spend periods with the ball at the feet of their three centre-halves, Hakeem Odoffin, Mads Andersen and George Johnston.
“The idea of passing it around the back is to open up gaps to play through, or they become slightly more aggressive and you can play over it,” Wilshere said.
“They weren’t aggressive with their press, which meant that we had a lot more stable possession — probably more than we thought. We knew we were going to try and attack in that way. And did we miss a few opportunities where we could play through them? Yes, I agree with that.”
Wilshere felt the biggest issue came once Luton had successfully progressed the ball into advanced areas.
“When we did play through them and we did arrive in wide areas, yeah, we didn’t have the quality in the final third,” he said.
“We didn’t attack the box with the right positions and the right areas to attack really. But ultimately what you need then is the delivery and the quality coming into the box.”
The manager was also critical of Luton’s final 15 minutes as they chased an equaliser, although he acknowledged that changing the structure can sometimes make things more difficult against a side such as Stevenage.
“We made a few changes from the side and we tried to attack in a different way. I think ultimately we weren’t good enough in that period of the game,” he said. “Naturally, there is a feel that when you’re chasing a game, you want to have more impetus and more threat.”
Wilshere said the lesson from last season was that changing formation or personnel while chasing games did not automatically produce a better attacking performance.
He said: “I think also sometimes — and this is my reflection a lot of the time from last year — when we were chasing the game and we tried to change something, whether it be the structure or personnel — more the structure — it didn’t necessarily work all the time, because the way we work is really specific on how we want to play and how we want to attack.”
He believes there was still plenty to take from the performance, despite the result.
“[There were] some really, really good things in the game that we need to carry on with and move forward with, but also some frustrating things that we spoke to the players about and we worked on this week.”
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