Bloomfield desperate to clinch his first win as Luton manager against Sheffield United

Hatters boss Matt Bloomfield is determined to pick up his first win as Luton manager when hosting Sheffield United this afternoon.

The 41-year-old replaced Rob Edwards in the dug-out last month, but has seen his five league matches glean just two points for his new side, that coming in draws against Preston North End and Sheffield Wednesday. Although Bloomfield has some way to go to equal the run of 13 that club legend Mick Harford set back in the 2007-08 campaign, while Syd Owen, who took the club to the 1959 FA Cup Final, had to wait nine matches, with David Pleat and Ray Harford both managing six matches before tasting victory.

Speaking about trying to secure that maiden triumph against a Blades side who have won six of their last seven Championship encounters, he said: “I want to win, I don’t like losing, I love winning, hate losing, hated it as a player, hate it even more as a manager. Winning’s the best thing that you can do in football, it’s incredible, and to do it with a group and go on that journey together is all the more fulfilling and we need to win football matches.

"Momentum is crucial in sport. We’re chasing that first one and if we can get that first one, we believe it can lead to more. It’s not been with us for a little while now, so we have to change that, we have to alter that, that only comes from playing well consistently and improving results. That builds confidence, builds belief and builds momentum, and winning’s a habit we want to get back into.”

Bloomfield also wants to finally give Town’s home supporters something to be enthused about, with his first two encounters at home seeing Luton draw and lose, with a dismal 1-0 defeat to Millwall in their last fixture. In fact you have to go back almost two months since the Hatters fans could last celebrate a triumph, and even a goal, that coming in the last-gasp 2-1 victory over Derby County on December 20.

Speaking about the importance of the Kenilworth Road faithful, he continued: “We really want to give the home crowd something to cheer, I want to give them a result to cheer. I think we have to attack and try and get our crowd in the game, Chris (Wilder) has done an excellent job at Sheffield United and they’re a very, very good team, there’s no getting away from that. It’s going to be a tough afternoon for us, but we have to get the crowd in the game we have to attack, we have to show our intent and we absolutely want to go after that. We have to have an edge about us and an excitement for these games.”

In order to pick up a much-needed victory and breathe life into the battle to stay up, Luton will need to shake off another disappointing performance on Wednesday night, that saw them beaten 2-0 at Sunderland and drop to the foot of the table. After the contest, Bloomfield commented that he ‘learned a lot’ on his players during the contest, and asked to expand on what he meant, said: “Plenty, we’re learning all the time, about ourselves, about the squad, as individuals, as a collective, relationships all over the pitch, what works well, what’s not working quite so well, how we’re trying to get towards better results and that’s what I meant by that.

"I think it’s really important to keep an open mind on these things and really important to try and treat everyone as fairly as you possibly can and give everybody opportunities. I’m learning all the time about the group and we’re trying to move forward as quickly as we can. It’s important to have an opportunity to bounce back, try and right a few wrongs, but let’s not be too down on ourselves. Sunderland are very good at home, we wanted to be better, but we’re really looking forward to being back at home and we want to put on a show for our supporters.”

What was one of the most disappointing aspects about the timid loss at the Stadium of Light was that it came on the back of 12 days off for the Hatters in which they were able to work extensively on the training ground to try and put Bloomfield’s ideas into practise. There was little evidence of any real change as Town were second best for almost all of the fixture and on Luton’s failings, the boss added: “I just think we didn’t execute the plan well enough. We knew what we were going after, we knew the areas of the pitch we wanted to get into but on the night it didn’t go for us and that was down to a variety of reasons.

“There were too many turnovers on Wednesday evening, I watched the game back, there were some individual errors, there were some turnover moments that we have to improve on as it’s hard to attack if we’re giving the ball away. We have to be more secure in our possession and we have to have that intent on going on the attack, especially at home in front of our crowd, and that’s our intention. We’ve worked in the last 24, 48 hours to rectify that going into the game on Saturday as I think it’s really important for us to understand our shortcomings, but we also have to keep upbeat and confidence and optimistic about how we’re going to correct that and how excited we are for the challenges ahead.

"We understand that we weren’t good enough in possession on Wednesday evening, we didn’t offer enough attacking threat and we want to be better. I’m very keen to get across the point that we understand, there’s a big end to the season for us but we want to improve. We have a third of the season to go and we have every intention of finishing the season where we want to.”