Luton v Peterborough – Views From The Bench

What a start to the 2021/2022 Championship season, just what the doctor ordered after an eighteen months the like of which, courtesy of the pandemic, we have not experienced before.

With Kenilworth Road full to the rafters, the Hatters served notice that they mean business this season.

Despite missing numerous regulars, Luton put Peterborough United to the sword, finishing emphatic winners.

Now I am not going to get on my soap box and start predicting we are promotion bound, I am too long in the tooth for that and I know it was only the first game of what will be a long and hard season.

However, in the face of adversity, with so many players missing, we showed that we have strength in depth and the foundations are there to do better than the 12th place we achieved last season.

After the game, understandably, the managers of the two sides, Nathan Jones and Darren Ferguson were at opposite ends of the emotional spectrum.

Talking to local media and as reported by The BBC, Nathan Jones positively enthused about the display provided by side, remarking:

“Fred was brilliant, absolutely brilliant, but that’s why we brought him here.

“We’ve got others and we work on stuff, he’s nowhere near his ceiling. Admiral Muskwe came on, I thought he was excellent. Carlos Mendes Gomes when he came on, settled us down, Henri Lansbury you could see why we brought him here and we’ve still got five or six who are not even in the squad.

“So the strength in depth we’ve got is very good. What we wanted to add we’ve added – pace, power and athleticism to the squad.

“I think we could have had even more quality today though as we got in some wonderful situations, but we need to convert those as we won’t always have a three-goal cushion.”

It does seriously look as if Luton have brought well this summer and if we can create the majority of the chances we create, we could be one of the surprise sides in the Championship.

However, for Darren Ferguson, it was a different story, with the Posh manager remarking:

“We made it difficult, we really did. I’m disappointed with the performance. You can’t give goals like that away in the second half. It’s nothing to do really too much with the level, it’s just the decisions we made.

“Even the first goal – we’ve got to stop the cross – the first goal’s a foul, both hands on my centre half, that’s a foul. But sometimes you get them, sometimes you don’t.

“They started the game as we expected, strong. We saw that through, we got a little bit of control in the game, we just needed to play with a little bit more belief in what we were doing.”

Nobody said life in the Championship was going to be easy for the newly promoted Posh but on the evidence of yesterday, they face a hard fight to make any kind of impact apart from trying to stave of an immediate return to League One.

For Luton, the next Championship fixture, away to West Bromwich Albion, will be a better test of just what we can expect this term.

COYH’s

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