Hatters boss urges Town to cement promotion challenge

Town boss John Still wants his side to cement their promotion charge in the upcoming weeks, writes Mike Simmonds.
John StillJohn Still
John Still

Hatters are currently third in the Skrill Premier, seven points behind long-time leaders Cambridge United, but have gone 11 games unbeaten in the league since a 2-0 defeat at Wrexham on September 13.

Still said: “If I walked out of the club tomorrow and a new manager was to come in here, he’d find everything in place and that’s how I judge it.

“To lose just two league games in a season so far is testament to how hard the players have worked physically and mentally to put us in a position where we’re in with a great opportunity to get promotion.

“We’ve played in my head the first third of the season and we’re into the second third of the season.

“The first third of the season has been terrific, the second third of the season we have to cement that and the last third of the season we have to push, push, push.”

Hatters have already come up against a number of the teams fighting it out for a place in the Football League next season, beating Kidderminster, while drawing against Cambridge and Grimsby.

Still said: “We’ve played Cambridge, Kidderminster, Grimsby, the ones who are in that group with us and not been beaten.

“That tells me we have the qualities that are needed to compete against the so called best teams, or the teams who are doing well at this time.

“I believe our team has grown from the first six games, we’ve shown we can not concede and we’ve shown we can score.

“At the moment, I’m well pleased with what we’ve done and where we are.

“There’s bound to be some lows for all of the teams, it wouldnt be football if it wasn’t.

“But it’s how you respond to a low and we’ve shown we can respond well.”

Although Hatters’ usually watertight defence has only kept one clean sheet in their last seven league games, that didn’t bother Still as he added: “Not at all, no. I think we held the record for clean sheets at one stage.

“With the amount of away games that we’ve had, we haven’t really conceded many in a game, I think two’s the maximum.

“The last two goals that we’ve conceded are deflections that we can’t do anything abou.t

“So when I look at goals conceded, I look at goals that are avoidable and goals that are unavoidable. And the last two we conceded were unavoidable.

“There was nothing you can do about it, so I’ve been quite happy with it.”

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