Hatters chief insists Luton can take confidence from Wolves stalemate

Luton boss Rob Edwards insisted his side can take confidence from their goalless draw at fellow Premier League side Wolves in their latest pre-season friendly on Wednesday night.

The Hatters emerged from Molineux with their clean sheet intact, keeper Matt Macey called into action more frequently as the second half progressed, palming Fabio Silva’s shot away and then flipping Pablo Sarabia’s header over the bar.

Austrian international Sasa Kaljdzic missed two excellent chances either side of the break, as Town found themselves up against a side they will face in the top flight this term, whose starting line-up cost in excess of £135m.

Manager Julen Lopetegui was also able to introduce £100m of talent from the bench just after the hour mark, including club record signing Matheus Cunha, who cost £44 from Atlético Madrid, but they still couldn’t break the Hatters down in the closing stages.

Speaking afterwards, Edwards said: “No injuries, more minutes for a lot of the group which is good.

"Again, progression, we built on the last four weeks or so since we’ve been in, it was nice, a nice little taste of the level, what’s to come.

"So overall, it was a really good night for the club, a good night for us, areas of course we can learn from and keep improving at, but also I thought we could come away from it with some confidence as well which is good.

“It’s pre-season, so none of us are going to get carried away.

"They’ve got lots of talent, but every team’s got lots of talent now.

"So I’ll say it once now and I don’t have to say it the other 38 times as we know we’re going into a really tough level.

"Against a brilliant manager who’s been right at the top, I feel like tactically we were good.

"We grew into the game nicely, especially in the first half and I thought we looked the better team in the last 15-20 minutes of that first half.

"We created one or two really good chances, gave one or two away that we can learn from as well and there’s definitely bits we can take from that going into the next week of training, but overall it was a good night.”

Luton had the ball in the net during the second half, Elijah Adebayo sliding home Ryan Giles’ excellent left-wing cross, but it was disallowed for offside, as Town created some decent chances of their own earlier on, Mads Andersen putting a header off target, while Carlton Morris saw his shot blocked.

Edwards added: “We’ve got some new players, we’re still building people up.

"One or two haven’t had 90 minutes yet as they weren’t quite ready to and there’s a real plan for them as we’ve got another game coming up on the weekend for the vast majority of the group.

"You can see there’s an organised team there and what we’ve got to make sure we always are is that we’re aggressive within that shape as well.

"I don’t ever want us to be passive, I think we probably felt our way in for five, 10, 15 minutes, where maybe we were a little bit, ‘okay, let’s wait, let’s have a look at this.’

"After that we began to get a bit more aggressive and make a bit more contact.

"I still think we can do more, but overall, pretty pleased with what I saw tonight.”