Luton chief praises Town's players for bouncing back from his 'toughest moment'

Luton boss Jack Wilshere has praised his players for their ability to bounce back from what he described as the ‘toughest moment’ of his managerial career at Kenilworth Road to date, the 1-0 reverse at Huddersfield Town recently.

Late last month, the Hatters had travelled up to the Accu Stadium on the back of a 1-0 loss at Plymouth Argyle just a few days earlier, and going up against a side who were one of their main rivals for the play-offs, saw their opponents reduced to 10 men with just half an hour gone. However, the Terriers then took the lead with a quite stunning goal from inside their own half in the opening stages of the second period, as Town weren’t able to hit back, only having one shot on target during the contest, despite having a numerical advantage for over an hour.

With the players’ confidence looking extremely low afterwards, midfielder Jordan Clark admitting as such that things were just ‘not right’ on the road, they responded by defeating a stubborn Blackpool side 1-0 at Kenilworth Road and then followed that up with quite possibly their best performance of the season when defeating Bradford City 2-1, once more on home soil, at the weekend.

They now have to somehow arrest their slump on the road in what promises to be the most difficult fixture of the campaign tomorrow, heading to a table-topping Cardiff City side who are unbeaten in 10 games on home soil, winning nine, two points clear of Lincoln City in second, and eight in front of third placed Bolton Wanderers with a game in hand over the Trotters.

On going to Wales with a chance of finishing inside the top six themselves still on having recorded those back-to-back victories, then on how his players have put that result in Yorkshire behind them, Wilshere: “It was a really tough moment, probably the toughest moment since I’ve been here for the group of staff, the group of players, we had to bounce back and we did. That’s credit to the players and how they took on the challenge. They showed courage and then won games. It was clear, after the Huddersfield game, we had 18 games left and we spoke about that.

"We said, ‘listen boys it’s there, we can do it, we believe we can do it, because you’re good enough to do it, but you have to go and execute it,’ and the players have done that up until now. That’s two games, two games ticked off, we know the next challenge is a big one and we want to tick that off, and then go again on Wednesday (at Wigan Athletic).

"The games are coming thick and fast now, we need everyone and we’re going to need to rotate and then change the team the next couple of weeks, but starting tomorrow is the next challenge and we have to be able to handle that, stand up to what Cardiff are going to bring, which is they want the ball and there’s going to be times where they’re going to have the ball, but then show courage to try and impose our game.”

Asked if he needs a positive performance and result to help silence any discontenting voices who might not believe that the Hatters can possess any realistic ambitions about going up this term, Wilshere added: “When you’ve been in the game for so long there’s always going to be doubters. When I was a player, then when I started coaching, when I went to Norwich last year there were a lot of doubters on the head coach there and to see how he dealt with that.

"I’ve faced a lot of doubters over the years and I’m sure the players have as well, especially when you go on a journey to the Premier League and then you find yourself in League One, that creates even more doubt. What I try to give to the players and create in the environment is clarity and clarity of who we want to be on the pitch, how we want to act off the pitch and how they both interlink with each other.

"I’m happy with the progress. We have to improve our away form as we know but we’re still building something and the doubters will always be there, we just have to focus on us and stand up to everything. We need to pick up results, I’m really aware of that and at the moment I don’t care how we play, I just want to win games. We’re doing everything we can to try and do that, but we believe and that’s the most important thing. We have to believe that we can do it and we can do it, we know we can, we just have to find a different way at times.

“If we go 1-0 down, not feel sorry for ourselves, not stop trying to play and do the right things, which we’ve done a lot this season. My message to the players is we have to do what we talked about. We have to keep doing the right things and adversity will come, whether we’re playing bad or it’s a bad referee decision or whether it’s a wonder goal from the half-way line. We’re going to face that and we have to react better to that.”