It is natural to feel a little down after a defeat, if we did not then perhaps our passion for our club is not what it should be.
It is fair to say that life in the Championship, in our second season back, has been better than in our first season, but, at times, our predicament can be frustrating.
One good result always appears to be followed by a poor result, there does not seem to be a natural progression.
Following our most recent defeat, at the hands of Cardiff City, a regular Vital Luton Town contributor – Alistair – posted a wonderful comment that asked some soul-searching questions.
With his permission, I have reproduced those questions below in the hope we can get a healthy debate going.
Please feel free to air you views in the comment facility beneath this article.
Here goes:
1 – Is Nathan Jones guilty of some baffling team selections and does he tend to play too many favourites?
2 – Is our inconsistent form lending itself to the Hatters being involved in a possible relegation fight (again), with teams like Derby County and Nottingham Forest who were well adrift of us at one stage now fast closing the gap?
3 – How many points do you believe Luton Town needs to secure another season in the second tier of English football?
4 – What is our biggest problem, is it giving the ball away far too easily or a failure to score goals be it because our strikers are off form, or we are not creating enough chances?
Let us see where this one leads us but thanks, Alistair, for the inspiration.
COYH’s
Stoke City v Luton Town?
Stoke to Win!
Luton to Win!
A Draw!
Previous article by Mad Hatter
Our failure to score goals and keeping the same strikers for each game. They should be dropped .
Yes Jones seems to play the same pool of players all the time..
He seems to think that setting up to defend is the answer hoping we will at least draw or nick a goal and win!
Lack of goals is obviously a difficulty but where on our budget would you find any better strikers?. I think the improvement in points this season is a big achievement and all involved in this are to be congratulated.
Indeed they should but it is disappointing that we are slipping down the table again after our bright start.
I agree. Definitely a lot better than last season. However NJ does seem to stick with his favourites despite lack of form.
For me Danny Hylton is not a player that should be starting at this level. He can do a job bringing him on 5 mins in the end to protect a lead but he never looks like scoring.
I am also baffled at the lack of game time for George Moncur. He is such a creative player and always looks like he might create something. I believe his goals to minutes played ratio speaks for its self. Now not even on the bench. Of course we don’t see what happens all week in training so it’s easy to judge the team selection. But something has to change as we could join that relegation battle if we can’t start getting the ball in the net. But I am still keeping faith for good run of games coming soon. COYH
1. Yes. Naismith being the weirdest. He’s played in 4 positions and possibly 5 but has been poor in everyone. I agree on Moncur. He’s joint second top scorer. He’s a sensible foil to Dewsbury-Hall. Too much is going through D-H at the moment and his lack of a right foot is hurting us. Moncur alongside him would help get the balance. Our best performances in recent weeks have also been without any striker. So if we don’t trust the others, maybe play to our strengths and have no one up front as a traditional striker.
2. We’ve been in a battle all season. We will be unless/until we hit 52 points or the season finishes with us above the line. We’re maybe more frustrated because we strung some results together early in the season.
3. 15 points from 17 games will do it. Possibly less given Blues and Wycombe are struggling. But we can’t get into the Bowyer mentality of thinking we’re only battling to avoid 1 spot.
4. Poor second half performances. What does he say at half time that leads to them coming out so slow?!
A striker that can’t get ahead of the front shoulder to the near post. Not having given Danny (or another striker) any time on the pitch to get into form so when Collo is struggling there isn’t a fallback position.
Maybe a manager who had his confidence knocked by Stoke? He sets up to not be beaten rather than to win games. That’s asking too much of our defence. Mistakes happen. At the back they lead to goals which fans go mad about (like at Sluga last season). A mistake up front leads to no goal (and less ardent screaming from fans). We can’t keep clean sheets every match. So to win games we need to be able to score much closer to 1.5 goals a game if we are to pick up more points. We’re at 0.8 goals a game at the moment.
There also seems to be lack of confidence on the pitch. 1 point from conceding first all season is evidence of that. Given that stat, and our lack of goals, Sluga and the defence should be held up as amazing.
I think we’ll stay up. And hopefully if we get mathematically safe before the last day, we use the remaining matches to play more expansive football. And then in the summer we work on the attacking structure and personnel in the hope that our defence remains as good as it has been and so we push on next year.
Thanks for the marvellous response Jim, much appreciated.
Hi all agree with a lot of comments today. I believe we will stay up think 50 will do it. We should also realise 2 or 3 wins puts us looking at the other end of the table….very tight top to bottom….many are saying drop the current strikers due to lack of goals yeah that so but many are also saying Danny ain’t a starter, so the question is, who do you go with ,???? Tuesday was a shame cos having just watched it again Cardiff weren’t all that. But they got a bit of luck. The second goal gets a massive flick off sonny, cornicks gets a defection of Cardiff’s defender and goes wide…. sometimes you need the rub of the green….collo should score, as should pelly….I said beginning of restart last season, keep the faith, we are in a far better position now, so again keep the faith and get behind the players….think we may all be a bit over critical too due to watching games on screens rather than in the grounds, everything is highlighted more….just a thought….
a good point about watching on TV, repeats highlight mistakes and are far more noticeable.