Bloomfield believes defensive tweaks have helped Luton become more miserly on home soil

Luton boss Matt Bloomfield revealed that some defensive tweaks he has made since arriving at the club are paying off following yet another clean sheet during Saturday’s goalless draw with Middlesbrough.

Before the 41-year-old agreed to leave his role as Wycombe Wanderers and head to Bedfordshire to replace Rob Edwards, Town had struggled to keep their opponents out at Kenilworth Road, only doing so on three occasions, conceding 16 goals from 13 matches. That has definitely improved since Bloomfield and his coaching staff took over though, as they have shipped just three goals in six matches on home soil, keeping out both Portsmouth and Boro in their last two outings, along with Preston North End during his first game in charge.

Despite losing ground in the battle to stay up when failing to register all three points at the weekend, the Town manager felt Luton’s improved defensive solidity was a huge positive to take from the 90 minutes, Boro failing to have a single shot on target. He said: “It has to be as there was a lot of talk when we came in the building about how many goals the team had conceded during the season and we had to stem the tide of which we’ve worked extremely hard on.

"It’s been a lot of hard work, tactical understanding, a determination to stop goals. There’s probably a few bits that tactically we’ve had to tweak and we’ve wanted to tweak and then it comes down to desire, also having more defenders available now which maybe we didn’t have at one point. The protection they’re getting in front too, the work-rate of the whole unit is really, really important. Your defending comes from the front, I know it’s a bit of a cliche, so I apologise for that, but it does. The front two have been working incredibly hard and all throughout the team, so there’s a lot of hard work that goes into it.”

Asked to go into a bit more detail on exactly what alterations he has made to the way Luton are lining up defensively now, Bloomfield continued: “It’s tactical nuances of different management and coaching teams, how you want your team to set up. We feel like the way we’re setting up now is what we feel comfortable with and it’s the way we want to implement. It’s about a tactical understanding of the game and certain habits.

"We’ve spoken a lot about habits and that’s in training as the more habits you can have in training it comes out on match-days. I believe in football you have to be ever so disciplined in your everyday work and if you do that more often than not then the game will pay you back. From the performances that we’ve seen, especially defensively, but also chance creation, those habits are starting to pay off for us and we have to keep going after it and the relentless drive to keep improving.”

Bloomfield does want Luton’s more stringent back-line to now marry up with a greater conversion of the opportunities that are being fashioned in the final third, as he added: “We want to score more goals but we’re creating the chances and it would be more of a worry if we weren’t creating the chances. We have to believe in the work we’re doing, we have to be positive about what we’re doing and anyone in the ground who watched that performance would be proud of it as a Luton performance.

"I believe in the evidence that we’re all watching, I think there’s some real shoots of optimism. We’re talking about the Sheffield United game here, first half when I think we could have been two or three nil up. The Plymouth game we could have won, we’ve gone to Cardiff and got a result, you can see the belief growing within the group. We’ve got to keep that chance creation and keep working hard and if we do that then the results will come.”