Hatters boss admits conceding goals is giving him sleepless nights

Luton boss Jack Wilshere has admitted that he is already having sleepless nights over the amount of goals his side are conceding in the early stages of the League One campaign.

Having been breached three times in their 4-3 win at the Madejski Stadium last week, ex-Hatters forward Jack Marriott handed a first half hat-trick due to some defensive errors and poor goalkeeping, Town were undone twice at the weekend as well, newly-promoted Notts County leaving Kenilworth Road with a 2-2 draw.

There was an element of fortune about the opening strike, Callum Roberts’ half volley taking a heavy deflection off George Johnston to arrow into the bottom corner, giving Josh Keeley little chance to make it 1-1 just before half time. However, the second goal was far more concerning, Ollie Cooper having the freedom of Bedfordshire to turn and beat Keeley on the hour mark, although Town themselves were able to quickly hit back, Callum Marshall opening his account to earn a point.

Having now been undone five times in two matches, asked if the manner in which his team were shipping goals had left him having sleepless nights, Wilshere said: “Yes, look at me! Different types of goals than Reading, Reading were goals that kept me up for about three nights. They worried me a little bit, however we had a really good meeting on Monday about that and the players agreed that we can’t give away goals. I don’t feel like we gave away goals today, but we definitely could do better with them and we just have to keep working, we know that.

"The way they work and the way the players are committed to improving all the time, we know we’re not going to be the team we want now. We’re going to look different in three months, in six weeks and that’s always the case within a season. You see little things and you work a little bit more, the team improves, and we’ve worked a lot with defending. It’s not defenders, we attack with 11, we defend with 11, everyone’s involved, everyone has a role, so it’s a team thing that we need to improve together.”

Although there was an element of fortune in the first goal, Keeley unable to do anything to prevent Roberts’ attempt from going in, it wasn’t the case with the second as with summer signing George Johnston dragged out of position, while Mads Andersen, in for Hakeem Odoffin, and Izzy Jones were caught out both marking the same man, Cooper was able to make his way into the box completely undetected to control Nick Tsaroulla's pass and slide past a totally exposed Luton’s Irish international.

On just how Town were sliced open so easily, Wilshere continued: “We have to look at the second goal we conceded as we can’t allow someone in our box with no-one around him. I need to see it again, I think that a runner goes into our box and there’s a little bit of confusion. One runs down the side of the pitch and tracks him a little bit and one runs through us, there’s a slight confusion, we can’t do that.

"We have to be clear and communicate with each other, we knew that, we knew that when they do get forward, they put numbers in your box, so we have to track them. We’ll look at it and review it as we always do, again we showed some spirit, but we don’t want to have to score three goals to win a game, that’s for sure.”

Having gone with the same back four against Gillingham in the Carabao Cup and their third tier opener at Reading, then Wilshere had to make his first alteration when hosting the Magpies, Odoffin only on the bench due to the cut on his head suffered against the Royals the previous weekend. That saw Andersen getting his first start of the campaign in the centre half of defence, and on why he didn’t go with Odoffin, Wilshere stated: “I felt bad for Haks because we managed him in the week to avoid contact, to give the cut enough time to heal and it has healed nearly.

"My worry against a team that were going to be aggressive, were going to be direct, had a striker that liked to bump, liked to feel contact, was that after 10 minutes if he got a knock and it started bleeding again, that would be very hard to stop. We wanted him with us on the bench just in case we had to take that risk, but he’ll be fine.”

One thing that Wilshere was happy with, was the goals going at the other end, as Nahki Wells’ penalty and Marshall’s equaliser stretched Luton’s run of scoring two or more goals in a game up to an impressive 11 fixtures. The boss added: “I would love a 1-0 win every single week, we need to get better at that. The pleasing thing is that we’ve conceded five, but we’ve scored six goals and I like that about us. We’ve got a lot of variation in how we attack, we can score goals at any point it feels like, but there’s no denying we have to stop conceding so many.”