Hatters chief admits to sleepless nights as he looks to keep Luton in the top flight

Luton boss Rob Edwards admits the challenge of trying to keep his side in the Premier League this season has been giving him sleepless nights recently.

The Hatters have completed 15 top flight games now, as they sit third from bottom in the table, just below the dotted line following Everton’s win against Newcastle United in midweek, with nine points to their name so far.

Having lost 10 matches to date, the most recent came in gut-wrenching fashion, as Town were beaten 4-3 by title-challengers Arsenal on Tuesday night when England international Declan Rice headed home in the very last seconds of stoppage time.

Once he had completed all his post match duties and was back home with just his own thoughts for company, Edwards admitted it made it yet another tough night for him to actually switch off, as he said “I didn’t have much sleep. It’s adrenaline, then you're thinking how did that actually happen? And you start thinking who have you got coming to town next.

"There’s all of that, a million things that go through your mind, you don’t (sleep), or I don't at the moment, International breaks are where I’ve been able to catch up a little bit on some of the sleep, we haven't got one of those for a long time, I’m just going to be knackered!

“You wake up thinking about it, that’s horrible, I’ll get better at that I’m sure. We knew we were going to be in that kind of battle, but it keeps you up at night, it does. I want to do well for this football club, I want us to get points, I want us to do well and I want us to stay in this league.

"It keeps me up at night, but we’ll keep trying really, really hard to get the results.”

The sickening nature of the loss against the Gunners and the higher demands of the Premier League meant Edwards had to give a far greater number of interviews moments after Rice’s winner than he would have had to if it happened last season in the Championship.

On just how he coped personally with having to discuss such a disappointing result when the emotions he was feeling were still so raw, the Town chief continued: “Sometimes when those things happen they’re a little bit surreal, you almost imagine it didn’t happen! It didn’t actually happen that last goal!

"I watched it back, we did as a staff and then you try to be rational about it because the emotion of goals can determine how you feel about a game. We’re always emotional about it, it is really hard to come out and speak to everyone after a game like that, you go so close, it was hard for me to stay level, try to be diplomatic, not hard to praise the players, because they were amazing, but it was difficult.

"I think reviewing it back and seeing how well we did, but also working on things, that give us a real focus as well. We keep trying to be better and keep improving as I actually thought we protected Thomas (Kaminski) better, bizarrely, as we conceded four goals, but you can’t do that at this level.

“It was an incredible night, that’s why Arsenal will, I’m sure, go very, very deep into almost every competition and will be fighting for the big trophies. Top teams they find a way and credit to them. Unfortunately we couldn’t quite hang on, but there were a lot of positives to take from the night.

"It was a special night, the fans were amazing, the Kenny was rocking and to push them all the way was huge credit to the players. It’s hard, it’s just in the end it’s a £105m man coming up with a big moment. It was a brilliant cross and a brilliant header, well timed, Gabe’s (Osho) right there with him, but it’s fine margins.”

During his post match press conference in midweek, Edwards had mentioned that he was going to ‘bounce in’ to training on the Wednesday morning with the emphasis swiftly switching to trying to get a result against Premier League champions and Champions League winners Manchester City tomorrow.

Asked if he had been able to, he added: “I was, but we all did. The lads were great, fair play to them. The training session was really good, was lively, recovery lads were excellent. After the training we had a debrief and learnt from the bits that we can and showed the positives, which there were lots of, and it was a good feeling when we left the room.

“We came in, we dusted ourselves down, reviewed it the day after, trained, and got it all out of the system. There’s areas that we were far from perfect and areas we can improve in, that’s always the case.

"Even if we’d have won the game that would have been the same and it was good to get that done and focus on another really, really tough game.”