Edwards admits he had words with a few of his Luton players after R's defeat

Luton boss Rob Edwards admitted he had a few choice words with his squad during the aftermath of their bitterly disappointing 2-1 defeat against QPR at Kenilworth Road on Friday night.

The hosts had looked on course for a long overdue opening victory of the campaign at the break, Jimmy Dunne’s own goal giving them a 1-0 advantage. Town started the second half in a positive manner too, Elijah Adebayo seemingly destined to double the Hatters’ advantage when being played clean through on goal by Shandon Baptiste only to fire against the legs of visiting keeper Paul Nardi.

That was to prove a pivotal moment as Rangers swiftly levelled, Michael Frey taking advantage of some ponderous defending from Mark McGuinness to find Nicolas Madsen on the hour mark, who easily beat an exposed Thomas Kaminski. Moments later it was Frey who was the beneficiary of some woeful marking to thunder a volley beyond Kaminski and leave the home crowd shell-shocked.

Despite injury time chances for Carlton Morris and Joe Taylor, the Hatters slumped to yet another reverse in front of their own supporters and asked what he had said to his players following the result, Edwards said: “I’ve had a word with a few in the dressing room. It’s not really (throwing teacups), but I’ll keep that in there.”

With McGuinness signed for what is believed to be a club record fee from Cardiff City, the imposing centre half had impressed at Preston North End on his debut, despite Town falling to a 1-0 loss at Deepdale. He continued to do so in the opening 45 minutes against the R’s before a poor mistake when he failed to deal with Steve Cook’s long ball and was then shrugged off too easily by Frey, who also got the better of Teden Mengi, teeing up Madsen for the equaliser.

Edwards wasn’t about to criticise any of his players publicly though, as he didn’t believe their mentality was a problem having dropped back to the second tier once more after a year in the Premier League, continuing: “I’m not going to blame one person. He can deal with the long ball, but then again, we can get people around to cover it.

"He shouldn’t be able to get in between two of them for the shot, so I don’t think it’s an attitude thing, because I’ve dropped down the Championship, I’m too good for this level, or anything like that. I don’t see that, but I do want more from the players. I’m not saying we’re great and everything’s going really, really well, it’s certainly not. We can still do more, but it’s not all bad either, it’s certainly not that.”

McGuinness was then replaced with 15 minutes left as Luton opted for back four in a bid to try and find an equaliser, as Edwards denied it was anything to do with his earlier error, adding: “We just wanted to go to a four, try and keep as much speed on that last line as possible to try and protect us when they counter and go. So it was purely a tactical one.”