Edwards felt Luton paid the price for a slow start during cup draw with Latics

Town boss Rob Edwards felt his side paid for a slow start as they were held to a 1-1 draw by Wigan Athletic in their FA Cup third round contest at Kenilworth Road this afternoon.

The visitors, who had gone into the game on the back of four straight defeats, conceding four goals in their last three matches, were up and running quicker, Tom Naylor opening the scoring on 17 minutes, tapping home after a brilliant save by Ethan Horvath.

Luton did begin to improve just before the break, Harry Cornick glancing Carlton Morris’s inviting cross over the line for his first goal of the season on the stroke of half time.

They upped the tempo in the second period as well, with 71 per cent possession in total, but despite dominating territory for large swathes of the tie, couldn’t seriously test Latics keeper Ben Amos.

Edwards’ side might have even gone out in stoppage time, Horvath making a terrific stop from Naylor’s looping header and Callum Lang’s goal from the resulting corner disallowed for an apparent infringement on the USA international.

The Luton boss knows his side had to be better from the outset when going up against the Championship strugglers though, as on seeing Town’s sequence of three straight victories ended, he said: “We paid for a slow start, we made a slow start.

"What they did well and it’s their prerogative, they’re away from home, they’ve obviously come off the back of a few defeats and they slowed it down well.

“They played it well, every time the ball went out it was 30 seconds or a minute for a throw-in or a goal kick, or a free-kick, and then it’s up to us.

"We’ve got to lift it, we’ve got to lift that intensity and we didn’t do that well enough in the early stages of the game, so that was down to us.

"Then we conceded and it was hard for us to wrestle any control back.

"I felt we did that as the half went on, we huffed and puffed, a fantastic equaliser at a great time, which didn’t really change my half time team talk too much, because we needed to lift things.

"Then I thought credit to the lads, we did have that intensity second half.

"We played some really good football without that final cutting edge.

"We got into some really good areas and it’s up to us now to get together and try to work hard on creating good, big chances when we do have those kinds of games.

"Credit to them for defending well, with good numbers, and then at the every, very end, big credit to Ethan for a fantastic save.

"He was doing his job, but did it very, very well.

“I can probably get my hair cut now as we haven’t won, so there’s one positive to come out of tonight.”