Doughty believes Town have 'no chance' of relegation with Luton rediscovering their 'fight'
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A hugely positive Alfie Doughty believes there is ‘no chance’ that Luton will be relegated from the Championship this season despite the Hatters’ worrying position near the foot of the table.
Town’s 1-1 draw at Sheffield Wednesday on Saturday, the first time Luton had avoided defeat on the road for 12 matches since beating Millwall 1-0 on September 14, saw the Hatters sitting second bottom, two points adrift of safety with 16 games to go. Although conceding his team are very much in a battle to stay up, Doughty, who bagged his first goal of the season in wonderful style at Hillsborough, has complete confidence they will achieve their aim under new manager Matt Bloomfield, especially after a transfer window that saw seven new additions welcomed by the club.
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Hide AdHe said: “It’s one of those, it’s the old saying isn’t it. Once you get relegated, you might have that bad, bad spell again, but I think we’ve got no chance of going down. I think we’ve got a really good squad, the signings that we made, they came on, made a real big impact, so I’m looking forward to it and I think everyone else is as well.


"I’m very confident with the squad that we’ve got. The fans see the things on the football pitch, but they don’t see it on the training pitch and I have full confidence in the gaffer and all these players around me. We might have been going through a bad spell, but the gaffer’s been with us for two weeks, we can already see an improvement with the way that we play. Now we need to get this win, it’s going to happen at some point.”
One of the main reasons why Doughty was so upbeat was due to the fight he saw on the pitch in South Yorkshire, something he felt had been absent recently, leading to a run of seven defeats from eight in all competitions, a period that the wingback turned winger missed all but two fixtures due to ankle ligament damage. It’s an aspect that will need to remain in Luton’s performances during the final few months of the season to avoid a second successive relegation, as he continued: “That’s what we’ve been missing, we haven’t had that fight recently.
"They all know it, but now it’s time to really kick on by showing that aggression again that we did when we got promoted, and even last year, we showed that fight again. Once we get that back I don’t think we’ve got anything to be worried about. I think it’s just happening. Before we were very naive, saying that we were never going to go down, we were never going to go down, but we’re here now, we’re in that relegation battle.
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Hide Ad"We need to get out of it, so I think now people are starting to realise that we need to start fighting again. We need to show that fight as quickly as possible and today was one of those situations. It is difficult, but hopefully now we’ve got that fight back in us and that gameplan, I think we’ve got nothing to worry about."
That fight saw Luton earn a precious away point in their bid to stay up at Hillsborough, thanks to Doughty’s fantastic blast from outside the box, his first goal of the season, but then a rearguard action that saw Mark McGuinness and Mads Andersen in particular to the fore, throwing their bodies on the line, keeper Thomas Kaminski also making some impressive saves, to ensure that once they were pegged back on the hour mark by Michael Smith’s penalty, that was all the Owls got.
On the result, which ended a wretched run of away performances, Doughty said: “It’s a step in the right direction, against a good team. A lot of people think Sheffield Wednesday are down there and think it’s an easy place to come to, it really isn’t. That’s where we look at it and go, it’s a very good point. It could have been three, but we have to take it in the right direction, so we’re happy with it.
“That’s the best thing about this place though, the second half they’re going into their fans, they’re going to get that kick up the backside, but I thought we rode the storm really well. Take away the pen, we didn’t concede from outside play, so I think we can take that as a positive again. It’s a stepping stone and we’re going in the right direction.”
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Hide AdThe Hatters won’t have it easy in their efforts to stay up, as they go to a Sunderland side next Wednesday who are unbeaten at the Stadium of Light all season. They then have a home game with title-chasing Sheffield United, before entertaining fellow strugglers Plymouth Argyle, as Doughty added: “It’s a tough game at Sunderland, but it’s time to rest, recover, really focus on what we need to do for the rest of the season.
"Then we’ve got Sheffield, so it’s a big week. I feel like we’re going in the right direction with this team. We’ve got a lot of tactics, we know what we’re doing now, so we’ve got to trust him (Bloomfield) and trust ourselves. I remember two years ago when we managed to get that one-nil, maintain that and then win and it was always win, win, win. Now we need to make sure that we stay on those three points and if we can do that then we’ll be alright.”
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