Bloomfield frustrated as his search for a first win as Luton manager continues after Plymouth draw
New boss yet to taste victory in his first seven matches
Hatters boss Matt Bloomfield was left frustrated that his lengthy wait to pick up a first win as Luton manager was stretched to seven games after a thoroughly disappointing 1-1 draw against relegation rivals Plymouth Argyle last night.
The hosts had gone close early on, Lasse Nordas heading Alfie Doughty’s tantalising cross over the top on his full debut, before the Norwegian forward had another attempt deflected over. Hatters then had a huge let off on 33 minutes when Callum Wright toepoked past a hesitant Thomas Kaminski, only for the Pilgrims midfielder to be wrongly adjudged offside.
After the break, Elijah Adebayo volleyed over the top, before Jacob Brown came off the bench for the forward to score with his first touch on 55 minutes, diverting Nordas’s knock-down past Conor Hazard to end Luton’s four and a half game search for a home goal. However, the visitors levelled on 70 minutes, Maksym Talovierov rising above Amari’i Bell’s tame challenge to find the net for what was only the Pilgrims’ sixth away goal of the campaign and restore parity.
Brown wasted another glorious opening moments later, putting his free header straight at Hazard, as it means that Bloomfield, who was appointed on January 14, is still searching for a maiden victory, taking a measly three points from 21 in that time. With Town themselves now on an 11-game sequence without a success in the Championship, they remain bottom of the table, two points away from safety, 13 games left to save themselves from an embarrassing drop into League One.
Speaking afterwards, then asked about not being able to enjoy a triumph so far, the boss said: “Disappointed, really disappointed. I wanted to do it as soon as possible of course, so I’m really disappointed it hasn’t come our way. A number of the games could have done. Preston in the first one absolutely could have gone our way, we’ve gone ahead twice at Oxford and not held out, and both Saturday (against Sheffield United) and tonight could have gone our way.
"They haven’t and we have to be honest with ourselves about the situation. I understand it, I don’t like it, but we have to be positive and keep focusing on getting that first victory. We wanted to win the game, but I think we have to be cautious to build it up into something, as nothing was going to be decided tonight. Of course we wanted to win, the performance showed that. My disappointment and our disappointment at not winning shows that, but at the same time there’s still games to play that we have to attack.
"I understand the severity of the situation that we’re in, of course I do and we believe we’ll improve and we have to believe that and we do believe that and on the balance of the two performances from Saturday and tonight, I think the evidence is there that we will improve. We wanted three points, we wanted to win the game, I thought we did enough to win the game and we're really frustrated not to have done so with the amount of opportunities we created.
“We limited our opposition to very little, but we didn't do the two boxes good enough to win the game ultimately and we're really frustrated about that. We're disappointed, the players are disappointed, but they've put everything out on the pitch and I don't think we can argue against that. We'll pick the bones out of it like we always do and use the positives for moving forward and look to use the negatives for the things that we need to improve on as there's a lot of work still to do and we aim to do that.”
Having taken the lead through Brown’s first touch on 55 minutes, the forward latching on to Lasse Nordas’s header to end what was a 415 minute drought for the Hatters at Kenilworth Road, Town were then pegged back just 15 minutes later, when towering centre half Talovierov was able to jump unopposed to nod home a deep cross
The goal came when centre half Mark McGuinness was off the pitch having picked up an injury which required treatment, leaving Town a man light at the back. They had defended the first cross well enough, only for Doughty’s clearance to skew horribly sideways and give the visitors the exact same opportunity to load the box, which they did to great effect on this occasion. Asked about his centre half being absent from the attack, Bloomfield said: “I think they take it from when the ball comes back in play.
"There’s obviously nuances to the rule, if the physio comes on then the player has to go off for 30 seconds, but if a player goes down, the game gets stopped, but he doesn’t get treatment, as we saw multiple times tonight, they just carry on. It’s frustrating for us to concede with Mark off the pitch. If he’s on we have one extra defender in the box, but I don’t want to make excuses, we’ve got to see out these moments, it’s crucial to winning games, absolutely crucial.
“We limited, I’ve been told, three shots to our opposition and that was one of them, but we didn't do the two boxes well enough to win the game ultimately and we're really frustrated about that. Second phase and switching off at set-pieces is something that unfortunately we’ve done a few times this season and if you want to win games you have to do everything absolutely right from the first whistle to the last and we’re really disappointed not to win.”
Luton could well have picked up the victory had Brown found the target again moments later, timing his run perfectly to meet Doughty’s wonderful cross, only to put his header straight at Pilgrims keeper Conor Hazard from just a few yards out. Bloomfield added: “We wanted three points, we wanted to win the game, I thought we did enough to win the game and we're really frustrated not to have done considering the amount of opportunities we created. I think we underperformed our xG (expected goals) again which we’re frustrated with and our opponents overperformed it and that’s what’s resulted in the point rather than the three.
"I’ll never criticise anyone for missing chances, it’s the hardest thing in the game to stick the ball in the back of the net, so I just praise the character to keep getting in there. We’ve got to keep getting in there, we’ve got to keep taking chances, we’ve got to keep getting on the end of them and if we do that and keep playing the way we have the last two games, the points have to follow. We can’t keep defying logic in terms of the we’re creating chances, it will come our way absolutely.”