Bloomfield feels 'responsible' for Luton's dismal drop into League One

Luton boss Matt Bloomfield conceded he felt ‘responsible’ for the Hatters’ depressing slide into League One this season.

The 42-year-old took over at Kenilworth Road back in January, appointed after previous manager Rob Edwards’ departure by mutual consent, as he took over a struggling side that were on a downward spiral following relegation from the Premier League, sitting 20th in the table and having lost their last five games, without a win on the road for four months either.

With Town then dropping into the bottom three before the new chief had even seen his players kick a ball, the former Wycombe Wanderers supremo found it difficult for his ideas to be put into practise early on, Luton failing to win in his first eight matches, making it 13 without a victory in total as they started to become in danger of being cut adrift below the dotted line. However, Bloomfield did finally manage to start winning some supporters over, by securing all three points in a 1-0 success over Portsmouth and also ended the club’s horrific away form as well, when defeating Cardiff City 2-1 in Wales.

There appeared to be some real green shoots too, January signing Thelo Aasgaard, Milli Ali and Christ Makosso all showing signs of real promise, while bar the 4-0 loss at Burnley where Kal Naismith's red card inside 20 minutes was a huge mitigating factor, he finally sorted out the leaky defence too. Winning six of the last 11 fixtures and three on the spin, Town finally got themselves out of the bottom three, as having shipped just five goals in nine matches, they went to West Bromwich Albion on the final day needing a win, which turned out to be a draw, to stay up.

They didn’t manage either though, falling back into their disappointing old ways when hammered 5-3 by a Baggies side with nothing to play for, becoming only the fourth team to suffer back to back relegations from the Premier League to League One in the process. Having been at the helm for 20 of the 46 league matches, then speaking afterwards about his part in the embarrassing drop down to the third tier, Bloomfield said: “I still feel very responsible.

"I’m extremely proud and honoured to be manager of this football club and I take my responsibility extremely seriously, so I feel very responsible for everyone right now as I’m here to do the best job I possibly can and I need to make sure as a football club we are getting better on the pitch. I’m very disappointed, very surprised, as are the players.

"We’re not blaming them, I’m not sitting here throwing anyone under the bus. They’re devastated and we’re together as a group. We’ll look at everyone involved and what we could have done better over the course of the time we’ve been in the building and make sure we’re very prepared for pre-season to come back fighting next season.”

Having needed a few months to turn around in his previous jobs at both Colchester United and Wycombe, there is a general feeling that had the long-serving ex-Chairboys midfielder taken over earlier in the campaign, say following Town’s 5-1 loss at Middlesbrough on November 9, the Hatters would have had enough to survive at this level.

On whether he felt needed more time to work his magic after Luton were already stuck in losing curve when he came into the building, Bloomfield, speaking at the Hawthorns, added: “As with anything, when there’s a drop off like that, there’s probably a number of contributing factors, some which we’re aware of, some it’s probably not right to discuss right now and some is we need to assess and make sure we come back better.

"I’ve not lived through the whole process, so I can’t comment on things before my time here, but I definitely think in the last couple of months we’ve seen results improve and the performances improve. We have to be relentless in our work to make sure we improve over the summer to come back. We’ve had a real good fight in the last 11 games, 21 points in the previous 11 games before now, but that doesn’t count for anything when you have a disappointing day, so we absolutely understand the situation.

“It’s hard to put your finger on it right now, we need to take a moment to assess that, not be too committed to making rash statements right now. It was disappointing, there were a few things that went wrong for us. It’s particularly disappointing for a couple of reasons. One being the day and secondly, compared to our recent performances. We’ve been very, very good, but today wasn’t so.”