Hatters chief hails 'incredible' Haaland and De Bruyne as the best duo he has ever witnessed

Luton boss Rob Edwards hailed Manchester City's Erling Haaland and Kevin De Bruyne as the best duo he has ever seen live after the pair ripped the Hatters apart in their 6-2 FA Cup fifth round victory at Kenilworth Road this evening.

Goalscoring machine Haaland scored five goals on the night, while De Bruyne bagged four assists, as Pep Guardiola’s side simply blew their hosts away in scintillating fashion. Speaking afterwards, Edwards said: “We’ve come up against the best nine and 10 combination I’ve seen, certainly I’ve seen live anyway.

"I know there’s people like Lionel Messi that might have something to stay on that, but the combination of Erling Haaland and De Bruyne tonight were pretty sensational and the supporting cast around them wasn’t bad either. So there’s some reality in our room that we’ve come up against some brilliant, brilliant players. We’ve given it everything, it was an entertaining game and that’s important, but it’s also important that we get better and I think we’ll do that, the lads will respond well

"There’s always things we can do better, I’ll look back and go, right, what can I take from it, where can I learn? Where can I help us improve? There’s no doubt about it, they were incredible and they played to the space that we gave them and did it very, very well. But look, our lads were incredibly brave and bold, stuck to the task and stuck to what I’m asking them to do and we’re committing to doing.

"Sometimes when you’re quite brave and bold and you come up against that kind of team, you can come unstuck and we did tonight. We’re not going to change, we’ve just got to get better, keep improving and we’re not going to come up against that thankfully every week.”

It had looked like a chastening evening was in prospect for the Hatters as Haaland netted a hat-trick within 40 minutes. Town midfielder Jordan Clark then gave the hosts hope with a wonderful curler into the top corner on the stroke of half time, also volleying into the roof of the net early in the second half to make it 3-2. Those dreams of a famous comeback were quickly doused though as Haaland clinically scored twice more, Mateo Kovacic completing the rout.

Edwards added: “It is disappointing to go out. We didn’t want to go out, we gave it everything and we didn’t want to. We wanted to win the game, we came up against a much better team in the end and they deservedly went through.

"We’ve done this on a number of occasions this year. We’ve come back from a few goals down, we don’t ever give up. It was unfortunate that we couldn’t get the last goal in the game. We talk about that. Let’s get the last goal, always keep pushing and try to give the fans something to sing about and be proud of. At 3-2, we gave ourselves a chance. The fourth goal was disappointing. They’re all disappointing.

“The slip from Clicker for the first goal and we’re 1-0 down after a few minutes after talking about having such a good start, trying to have a good start in the game. The fourth was frustrating and we could’ve been better in that moment, no doubt about it. It’s on me. I’m asking the lads to play this way and, at times, against amazing movement, world-class players, the timing of the pass and the detail of where it goes, we came unstuck a little bit.

"At 4-2 it’s almost game over then when we’d given ourselves a glimmer. We have to dust ourselves down, learn quickly, bounce into training and look to try and attack the game on Saturday. It is a huge game for us now.”