Jack Wilshere wants Luton Town’s frustration at finally losing a game to fuel an immediate response when they return to League One action at Mansfield Town tomorrow.
The Hatters’ remarkable 15-game unbeaten run, in all competitions, came to an end with Thursday night’s 2-0 Carabao Cup defeat at Chelsea, but Wilshere is encouraged by the reaction he has seen from his players since.
Rather than allowing disappointment to linger after a performance that earned plenty of praise at Stamford Bridge, the Luton boss wants his side to use the feeling of defeat as motivation when they face Mansfield just 65 hours later.
“We don’t like losing. Some of them are frustrated. I like it,” Wilshere said.
“I said to them, be proud, but they’re frustrated. And use that — you know, we haven’t lost in a while and we haven’t had this feeling for a while. And we don’t want it for too long.
“We want to respond, we want to bounce back.”
It is the first time Luton have tasted defeat since March, ending a run which stretched across the final 12 games of last season and the opening matches of the new campaign.
Wilshere believes the disappointment is a positive sign of the mentality developing within his squad, but now wants to see that attitude translated into a performance at Field Mill.
“They’re going to have to take this on the chin,” he said of the cup exit at Chelsea.
“We know fans will be travelling up to Mansfield. We know what they want to see. And we know this league. We know what it demands. There’s no hiding away from that. There are some non-negotiable things you just have to do. And that won’t change on Sunday.”
Luton face a very different challenge to the one they encountered at Stamford Bridge, where Chelsea dominated possession for long periods and forced the Hatters into a defensive performance.
Wilshere expects Mansfield to provide a more familiar League One test, with the Stags likely to be aggressive and play man-to-man.
The Luton boss is yet to taste victory against Nigel Clough’s men, having lost to them on his Hatters managerial debut and then coughing up a two-goal lead in the reverse fixture, before fighting back to earn a point. He has already started reviewing the their encounters from last season and believes his side can take confidence from what was arguably one of their better performances despite falling 2-0 behind early on.
“I already started watching our game back from Mansfield,” Wilshere said. “I thought last year, actually at Mansfield, we were outstanding. We went 2-0 down early in the game, which I wasn’t happy about, but we could have won that game four or five. So we know what we need to do. We know what we need to execute.”
The biggest challenge, however, may be physical. With the Chelsea game only two-and-a-half days earlier, Wilshere has stressed that his squad must recover quickly and be ready to produce another committed performance.
“Going into pre-season, when we were reviewing things at the end of last season, that was a big focus — one of the biggest focuses for pre-season is preparing the players for what’s coming,” he said.
“We know what’s coming. It’s probably come a little bit earlier than we expected with how the games [fixtures] have moved around. But players are ready. Players are prepared. I said to them [after Chelsea], in 65 hours we’ve got to go again and compete.
“I don’t think Mansfield are going to make it easy. They’re aggressive, man to man. So we know what we have to do and we’ll recover and we’ll go again.”
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