Determined Wilshere has no doubts in his ability to turn things around at Luton
Town chief confident in his ability to be a success at Kenilworth Road
A determined Luton boss Jack Wilshere doesn’t doubt for a second that he has what it takes to turn things around for the Hatters after a tough run of results recently.
The Town chief looked to have pushed his side back into play-off contention with three wins from four over the Christmas period, as they took on Lincoln City last month knowing a victory could even possibly reignite their faint dreams of a push for the automatic promotion spots. Being held to a 2-2 draw by the Imps wasn’t the worst result in the world, but after that, Luton then lost back-to-back away games at Plymouth Argyle and Huddersfield Town by a solitary goal, the latter defeat made worse by the fact that the Terriers were down to 10 men for over an hour, with the Hatters’ only managing a single shot on target.
It saw Town fall to ninth in the spot in the table, increasing the pressure on Wilshere to improve results at Kenilworth Road, particularly with the club’s hierarchy stating promotion was the only acceptable outcome for the season and he did so with a 1-0 victory over Blackpool on Saturday thanks to Jordan Clark’s winner, which saw them remain six points adrift of the top six with 17 games to go.
Almost four months into his first role as a number one, the 34-year-old, who is used to life under the spotlight, as it was something he had to deal with for the majority of his playing career, coming through at Arsenal and going on to make almost 200 appearances for the Gunners, also winning 34 caps for England, believes that kind of pressure will stand him in good stead for the next phase of his career in the dug-out, as speaking last week, he said: “I grew up from the age of 16 with a load of eyes on me and I made a load of mistakes.
"One minute I was good, one minute I wasn’t good enough, and maybe when I was younger I might have struggled with that a little bit, but it turns into a drive, a resilience in you that you know how to deal with it. You know how to cope with it, you know how to hopefully lead by example with that type of stuff with the players and bring them with you, so I’m determined to improve this club, to improve how we play, to improve our position in the league.
"Everyone is aligned with that from the leadership group and as much as after the game (against Huddersfield) you saw my body language was terrible and I reflected on that and thought ‘you can’t be like that’, because I’m the guy that everyone’s looking at, I’m the leader and I want to lead by example, but the only reason I was like that was because I care so much and it hurt me and it hurt me for the players, because I said we have to win that, and we do have to win that game, and we didn’t.
"So as much as sometimes it might not look like it, I’m loving it, I’m enjoying it, I’m enjoying the challenge. I enjoy sitting down with all my coaches and saying how are we going to win this game? Trying to work out a way to do that, and there’ll be ups and downs. It’s sometimes harder as a player as when your confidence is gone and you struggle with confidence, things become really hard.
"I’ve got a group of coaches around me that I believe in, especially someone like Chris Powell (assistant) who gives me advice all the time on selection, on how we should play, should we be a little bit more pragmatic at times? And I don’t doubt myself as a manager. I’ve got confidence in myself that I can turn it around and I think the main thing about that is you embrace that and you try and find some enjoyment in that which I’m doing.
Prior to the transfer window closing on Monday, Wilshere had mentioned how since arriving, he had noticed some issues within the culture at Kenilworth Road that needed changing, although didn’t expect that to happen purely with the addition of a few players during January. Going into a bit more detail on just what he meant by those comments, he continued: “First of all, the culture here, I wouldn’t have come here if I didn’t like the culture, the culture here is top and has a real family feel which I like about it. But when a new manager comes in, obviously I want to try and influence that culture and what I meant by that is, as soon as a little bit of adversity comes, we can’t have the culture where we accept it’s tough and we’ve been here before, we need to come out of that.
"We need to show courage, we need to show belief, we need to accept that we’re going to face adversity, especially when a club has been where it has been and there’s an expectation to win most games and we have to deal with that, we have to accept that. It’s not that way, but the perception from outside is it’s like that, so we have to have a culture that doesn’t accept that, doesn’t accept that we’re going to go 1-0 down and we’re just going to go and allow the game to get away from us.
"To be honest with you we’ve changed that a lot and I don’t want it to creep back in where we accept it. I think about the Mansfield game (2-0 defeat) that was a big eye opener for me because I had a perception when I came in of what it would be like. In my opinion, we started really well and started doing things we were talking about, but then as soon as we missed a penalty, as soon as we gave the ball away and conceded a goal it was a different feeling. We’ve worked really hard to try and change that, try and build the players belief, build the players confidence and we don’t want to fall back into that. I’m doing all I can along with the club to try and avoid that situation again.”
Asked where he thinks that particular problem has come from, Wilshere pointed to the feeling of successive relegations from the top flight which has seen the Hatters suffer 58 defeats in their 113 league matches since winning that play-off final over Coventry City at Wembley so gloriously in May 2023 and has now left Town in a division that they or their fans didn’t want or expect to be in again so soon.
He added: “I think the players feel it, the players face a lot of adversity and probably because they’ve been to the Premier League, then went down to the Championship and didn’t expect to be relegated, that naturally creates a feeling amongst the fans that we need to get back there, we need to get back there quick and we shouldn’t be where we are. But my message to the players from day one was, we’re here, let’s accept it, let’s commit to it and let’s try and solve it and get out of it.”