Disappointing Stags loss doesn't dampen Wilshere's belief in his Luton players
New Hatters chief insisted he saw some positives during opening defeat
Luton’s 2-0 defeat to Mansfield Town on Saturday didn’t do anything to shake new manager Jack Wilshere’s belief that his players can still go on and make it a successful season for the club.
Taking charge of his first game as manager, having replaced Matt Bloomfield at the helm on the Monday, then the ex-Arsenal and England star saw his side miss a penalty through Nahki Wells in the first half, before the Stags took the lead soon afterwards, Well’s misplaced pass seized upon by Rhys Oates who curled beyond Josh Keeley and into the top corner.
After the interval, Tyler Roberts then converted his own attempt from the spot after Mads Andersen was penalised for handball, as with their already fragile confidence shattered once more, Town, bar a late shot from Zack Nelson that flew over the bar, never looked capable of getting even a consolation. However, having only had a few days to work with his new squad, Wilshere, who had talked up the players’ response to him and his coaching staff in training ahead of the contest, was still positive about the future, along with certain bits he had seen during the 90 minutes too.
He said: "I think at the start of the game we suffered. In this league you have to suffer, that’s absolutely fine, but when you suffer, don’t concede goals, defend your box, stick together, land on second balls, all these basic things we talk about. I thought we did that in the first 10 minutes without actually imposing ourselves in the game. Then we did impose ourselves and we started to see some things come out we had talked about, but then we give a goal away and of course confidence goes again.
"So the positive is how we managed that start and came through it, but then we have to continue that and even after they score, we have to continue that, which we probably lacked a little bit. We were still trying to threaten, but we didn’t really create anything, so I think the positive is the players were trying it, but maybe a lack of confidence.
"When a team sits on the edge of the box, it takes someone with a lot of courage to be brave, maybe drive at them, to bring someone out or put the ball wide, put the ball in the box. There’s so many things now that I see and I think, okay we can focus and move forward like that and of course we’d have liked to do it with a win behind us, but even if we’d have won there would have been some things that we saw that we didn’t like, so we’ll look at it and we’ll go again.
"Listen, of course we wanted to win, it’s been a top, top week and that doesn’t change the way the players worked. We have to highlight that to them, we have to recognise it as that’s how we want to move forward, that’s how we want to work. I learnt a lot, but I still feel the same as when I walked through the door. Of course you want three points, but there’s work to be done and we’re all in.”
With Town having a good spell in the first half where they did pop the ball around nicely, Gideon Kodua sidefooting into the side-netting after one such impressive move, with Luton also playing through the lines well to find Jordan Clark in space in the area twice, the midfielder also bursting through himself to win the spotkick that Wells unfortunately put too close to Liam Roberts.
Asked if that was the kind of style of play that Wilshere was looking to imprint on his new set of players, he continued: “Yes, there’s a bit more than that, but I said to the players, I gave them some ideas this week, but it’s going to take time. You can’t do it in one training session, we tried to give them some ideas, but I also tried to make it clear that they are the decision makers on the pitch. I think we need to have a style of play that has everything. We have variation in attack, we can play a little bit longer if the game opens up, if they become aggressive we can try and find passes, there’s loads of things we can do, and we will.
"We have to get the players to the point where they know and they understand that, okay we’re playing against this opposition and they’re going to be aggressive, so we’re going to do this or we’re going to attack these spaces. There’s a lot more that goes into it than that, but I want the ball and I want to have more control in games. I think in this league you can’t ask for too much control as there’s so many random things that happen, like you saw, but we have to get better and try and find a bit more control.”
Although he saw his side have over 66 percent possession on the day, with a passing accuracy of 81.7 percent, Wilshere also knows that Town will have to mix things up to ensure they give themselves the best chance of picking up the wins needed to climb the table if they were going to figure in the anticipated promotion race this term, adding: “I’d like to think I’m adaptive and different coaches have different ways of working, but I’m a big believer in sometimes you have to do what the game needs and when the game speaks to you, you have to listen to it. You can’t then become naive or, this is our playing style, this is the way we play and this is it, we’re going to stick to this way. No we have to be adaptive and have variety in everything we do and be unpredictable.
“It’s looking at opposition and having certain things, certain triggers, if they’re aggressive we can do this, and how do we get there. We train and we work and we have meetings and the players will start to understand what we want. Against Northampton you’re not going to see a thousand passes or whatever it looks like. We’re in a situation where we need to understand it, accept it and that’s it, commit to it. If there’s moments in games where it feels like it’s tough and we’re struggling a little bit and we need our leaders on the pitch, we need our ability to just become really hard to play against and play a different way, so we have to work.”