Luton boss felt red card 'completely changed' the game during Swans loss

Luton boss Rob Edwards felt the red card shown to Town defender Joe Johnson during Luton’s 2-1 defeat at Swansea City this afternoon completely changed the game.

With the scores level at 1-1, the teenager, who had been booked in the first period, was then adjudged to have tripped Eom Ji-Sung as he sped into a mass of Hatters bodies, referee Farai Hallam brandishing a second yellow which saw him dismissed. Although the official came on out Luton’s side when not awarding a penalty against Tom Holmes in the early stages of the second period, he was definitely far more lenient towards the home players when it came to filling up his notebook.

Having made 17 fouls to the Swan’s 14, Luton seeing Mark McGuinness and Jordan Clark cautioned, with Johnson picking up two, the Swans escaped punishment for similar if not identical offences, until Matt Grimes was eventually carded in stoppage time. With the academy graduate off the field, Luton’s intentions of pushing on for victory were ended, as they tried to defend for the closing stages, eventually breached in the first minute of stoppage time by Myles Peart-Harris’s close range header.

Discussing the incident, Edwards said: “People can have their own opinions and be critical, I’m not at all. I think he’s trying to avoid it, and the lad’s running at him at full speed. It’s a difficult position for Joe to be in, so I don’t think it was. I think the lads tried to avoid contact, he's gone over, but it happens very quickly and the ref’s made a decision and that’s his call. It’s changed the game completely.

"We made a similar amount of fouls in the game and we have four or five (bookings) and they had one booking. I didn’t agree, but even when we’re down to 10 right towards the end, if everyone does that job right when we’re defending the box, which we did 99.9 percent of the time, then we get something from the game, but we didn’t.

"It was backs to the wall and the way they play they’re going to dominate the game at that point, find the spare man if we start jumping out all over the place. We defended really, really well and one moment, we switch off at one moment where they scored and ultimately that's cost us, so we all feel very, very flat, dejected right now as we put a lot into that performance today.”

Although Swansea were clearly the better side in the first period, dominating all aspects of the contest apart from the goals column, after the break it had become a more even affair at least until Johnson’s dismissal which saw City take control once more. Edwards had been happy enough with his team’s efforts overall though, as he added: “You have to defend, I watched them last time out here against QPR and they completely dominated the game.

"I felt that we were still comfortable in our defending in the first half, but in the second half we were better. The intensity and the pressing was really good, regains were great, when we won it back we kept it better. There were too many turnovers in the first half which was a similar story to when we played them in the first game. But that was better in the second half and we were the better team up until the red card.”