Luton boss insists Holmes wasn't at fault for Oxford loss despite dropping defender for Millwall clash

Luton boss Matt Bloomfield was eager to point out that defender Tom Holmes hadn’t been made the fall guy for Tuesday night’s 3-2 defeat at Oxford United, despite dropping him to the bench for Saturday’s 1-0 loss against Millwall.

The 24-year-old had started all of the Hatters’ previous 11 league and cup matches, including Bloomfield’s first two fixtures in charge, Luton keeping just one clean sheet in that time, as he was part of a back-line that were breached three times the Kassam Stadium in midweek, failing to prevent both Michal Helik and Ciaron Brown from scoring the hosts’ first two goals, before Greg Leigh was also left completely unmarked to head home the winner.

That saw Town’s new manager make one alteration in his defence at the weekend, the ex-Reading player named as a substitute, with a now fully-fit Mads Andersen coming in for just his second start of the campaign, playing the full 90 minutes alongside centre half Mark McGuinness. He was one of four changes made in total by Bloomfield, Carlton Morris, Jacob Brown and Alfie Doughty also coming in, as on his decision to switch things up, the manager said: “I just think that if you’re conceding three goals and that’s not to put the blame on Holmesy by the way because it wasn’t on him for Tuesday evening.

"I explained that to him, that wasn’t the decision. It just feels like Mads has now been training for a good period of time and he’s got to have an opportunity to play at some point. I felt like the physicality that we needed aerially would suit him and I thought to a degree he did that. So that’s absolutely not on Holmesy for Tuesday night, it wasn’t. Only one change in the back four, it can make it look like it that, and it certainly wasn’t that. It just felt it was the right time to give Mads an opportunity to go and play.”

Although Andersen made eight clearances throughout the contest, he might have felt he could have done better to prevent the goal, unable to adjust his body in time to stop Raees Bangura-Williams’ pass reaching Mihailo Ivanovic, and then fail to get a block in as the Serbian international fired a superb volley into the corner of the net from outside the area, with what was the only moment of genuine quality all afternoon.

The goal came just seconds after Elijah Adebayo had come on for Tom Krauß, Town’s striker unable to do enough to prevent imposing centre half Jake Cooper from being first Kaminski’s clearance upfield, which ultimately saw the ball end up in Luton’s net less than 15 seconds afterwards, as Bloomfield continued: It’s come from our goal kick. We missed out on the second in the middle of the park and that’s what the game was built around, those second balls, those moments where you try and turn the game in your favour.

"It was a bit of quality and it was a great finish, but from our point of view it was a disappointing goal to give away. We wanted to go on the front foot and go and attack, drop Carlton slightly deeper, play him just behind, but unfortunately that just took the stuffing out of us a little bit and then we had to try and build some momentum again. Obviously, given a goal lead, away from home, Millwall are never going to want the game to be free-flowing at that point and that’s understandable. Yes, we had moments, but not enough and not moments that we turned into goals.”

The frustrating thing for Bloomfield was that after the impressive nature of Town’s defending in his first game in charge the previous weekend, a goalless draw against Preston, plus some bright sparks in the an attacking sense during the first half of their midweek loss, neither of those improvements were on display versus the Lions, themselves on a six-game winless streak, as Ivanovic could easily have netted twice more in the second period, Kaminski, who had already saved Aaron Connolly’s first half penalty, the only reason he didn’t.

The boss added: “I thought we did some good stuff in the first two games this week but the third one wasn’t the level that we need. We looked a little bit leggy at times, didn’t have the same energy, zip and intensity about us. I think a few of the boys were playing their third game in a week for the first time in quite a while, maybe that showed.

"We made four changes, possibly could have in hindsight made a few more, because of the energy that we needed. It was a stop-start game, it wasn’t a huge footballing spectacle I don’t think. It was a game of set-pieces and we didn’t quite come out with enough second balls and start to build momentum and keep the ball on the pitch. It was too stop-start and ended up being a scrappy affair and it was always probably going to be one goal that made the difference.”