Luton will remain bold as Hatters boss declares he's not having Spurs 'carnage' again

Luton boss Rob Edwards will continue to be bold in his bid to guide the Hatters to Premier League safety this term after never wanting to witness a repeat of the way in which his side begin a game as they did against Tottenham Hotspur earlier in the season.

Back in October, the Hatters, just eight matches into their top flight campaign, with one win and one draw, welcomed their first real big six side to Kenilworth Road in the north London club. It was a fixture that should have seen the visitors out of sight within 20 minutes too, as looking to stay in the game with the low block they had adopted, the Hatters defence was sliced open time and time again.

Richarlison, Pedro Porro, Son Heung-min, James Maddison and Dejan Kulusevski all peppered the hosts’ goal with just wasteful finishing, desperate blocks and the brilliance of Thomas Kaminski keeping Ange Postecoglu’s side out. To their credit, Luton did improve in the second half and become more of a threat themselves, but left empty-handed when Micky van De Ven scored from a set-piece.

That match went on to spark something in Edwards that saw him determined never to set up his team in the same manner again, as although a far braver and attacking approach has seen Luton concede early on twice in their last two home games, Rasmus Hojlund scoring after just 37 seconds for Manchester United and Erling Haaland finding the net within four minutes for the blue side for Manchester in midweek, those goals came from mistakes further up the field which the Town chief insists is nothing to do with the style of play.

He said: “The early goal we conceded, Amari’i (Bell) will hold his hands up, it was just a one-off mistake against United. The other one the other night, we could have been better, we could have won the ball back higher, we could have tracked on the inside of the run of (Kevin) De Bruyne, but then he stood on Clicker’s (Jordan Clark) foot and Clicker fell and slipped.

“Clicker was in the right position and would have snuffed it out, but as he’s running through, it’s not a foul, but he’s stood on Clicker’s foot, ripped his boot, and Clicker’s fallen over. So a couple of things have gone against us against United and City with those early goals. We didn’t concede an early goal at Anfield, it’s just those two games, a mistake and an unfortunate error where we could have been better higher up the pitch, then if he doesn't stand on Clicker’s foot and he doesn’t fall, it doesn’t happen.

"So there's a few reasons why it’s happened, but I'm not going to go, right let’s go here (defensive position) a second lads and just wait and then have Tottenham for instance where we’re just defending our goal-line and it was flipping carnage for the first 18 minutes. I’m not having that again, I’d rather be bold and go for it and try to score two like we did in the first two minutes against Brighton then be defending the edge of our box and it’s hard to get 100 yards up the pitch then. I’d rather that, we’ve just got to cut out the errors and hopefully Kevin De Bruyne doesn’t stand on Clicker next time.”

Town’s switch in tactics has seen them put four past both Brighton and Newcastle United since the turn of the year, but that 4-4 draw at St James’ Park was the start of Luton conceding 19 goals in five games, as they shipped four to Liverpool and six against Pep Guardiola’s superstars in midweek. Despite that, Edwards is still eager to go about things in such a manner to give his side what he feels is the best way of staying up, as he continued: “We will do (play the same way). Don’t get me wrong there’s things that we have learned and hopefully will put into action to improve and be better.

“Some of the mistakes we made in a weird way, were us trying to be too brave, take too much responsibility, and it probably didn’t help others. You’ve got to try and do one and a half jobs and do it well. Probably because people were too keen to do my job against him and we got a few bits wrong, but we were up against arguably the best and it ended up being a tough night.

"That being said we watched the game back and there was some good stuff there. We’re on the right track, we just came up against a better team who were brilliant on the night. We got some stuff wrong that hopefully we’re going to improve on.”

With 13 matches of the season now to go, the Hatters find themselves inside the relegation zone, but just four points away from Nottingham Forest, while also having a game in hand over the Reds. Asked if he would have taken that position at the start of the campaign, Edwards added: “I don’t know, the way it’s actually gone and the way we’ve maybe grown into the season, understood it, understood ourselves, we can play in this league, maybe. It was a difficult start for us, losing the first four games and then getting a point against Wolves in the fifth one.

"We made it difficult for ourselves at the start, so to be in this position right now where we are still in the fight is good, but we all want more, we’re all a bit greedy aren’t we? I suppose we can all say we’ve left a few points out there at times, we could all be a little bit higher up. We are where we are and that’s the reality of it, so we’ll take it, but we certainly want more.”