Bloomfield felt confidence was lacking from his Luton players at Stevenage

Luton boss Matt Bloomfield felt that the confidence amongst his players was lacking during their 2-0 defeat at Stevenage on Saturday.

A few days prior, Town found themselves in the same situation at Blackpool, as trailing 2-0 early in the second period, Town made a number of substitutions which allowed them to hit back and earn a point thanks to Jordan Clark’s deflected effort and then Gideon Kodua’s stoppage time penalty. Having got through to half time at the Lamex Stadium goalless, then the visitors fell behind on 65 minutes, when a breakaway led to Chem Campbell curling his shot beyond Josh Keeley and into the net.

Bloomfield rang the changes once more, making a quadruple substitution on 68 minutes, with Clark, Shayden Morris, Milli Alli and Joe Gbode all thrown on. Boro also made an alteration too, Jordan Roberts introduced, and just over 60 seconds later, it was the forward who had the most impact, volleying beyond Keeley at his near post when a free kick was cleared to double the home side’s lead.

From then on there was no real chance that Town were going to rescue a point this time, as Stevenage should have netted again, Jamie Reid going clean though only to somehow sidefoot wide of the target. Asked what it was like to witness the visitors’ heads drop so noticeably, Bloomfield said: “It was really disappointing to see. As we saw Tuesday there was a fight to get ourselves back in the game, I think the fight was there, but maybe the confidence dropped and there were some individual errors after that which happens in a tough moment.

“We picked as experienced and as robust a team as we could as we understood the nature of the game and the importance of the game. We got as many leaders out there as we possibly could, obviously we couldn't pick Clicks (Clark) because of his calf, so we got as many leaders out as possible.”

Town did have chances of their own to move in front before Stevenage opened the scoring, none more so than when Cohen Bramall went through after a fine move in the opening 10 minutes, only to sidefoot over the bar when faced with home keeper Fiip Marschall. Lasse Nordas was then denied by the legs of the stopper early in the second period when the deadlock hadn’t been broken, not getting enough on Bramall’s cross after a Jake Richards flick.

On those missed opportunities, Bloomfield continued: “We need to be in better positions to score goals. We’ve gone over it this week, but we’ll go over it again. Lasse has got across the front for one and the goalkeeper’s made a good save, there’s been more that’s gone across the face, that was happening when we had two upfront and still with one upfront. We’re getting into the final third a lot, we’ve discussed it a lot. We’re getting lots of box entries, but we’re not getting the number of goals that we need to win football matches.”

The Town chief had rung the changes for the game, four of them, giving Richards his full league debut, while also recalling Teden Mengi, Nordas and Kodua, as on the reasons behind that call, he added: “I think we’ve got some players who really struggle with a three game week so we’re trying to piece it together when we have busy periods of games. There’s lots to consider and the boys who came on on Tuesday evening rightly got their opportunity to start the game, most of them.

"Clicker wasn’t quite ready, he’s had this calf issue that is limiting him to 20 minutes, half an hour each game. It should be sorted by the time our next league game swings around so we tried to freshen it up, get fresh legs on the pitch. The game wasn’t really played, there wasn’t much football at all first half which is really disappointing and then second half I thought we played well for 20 minutes. Then we conceded a really good finish, but a scrappy goal and from that moment it was a very tough afternoon for us.”