Luton winger still haunted by Town's second half capitulation at AFC Bournemouth

Luton winger Andros Townsend admitted that he is still haunted by Town’s second half capitulation at AFC Bournemouth back in March that was a potential hammer blow to the club’s efforts at staying in the Premier League this term.

The Hatters had been leading 3-0 at the Vitality Stadium thanks to first half goals from Tahith Chong, Chiedozie Ogbene and Ross Barkley, as they looked to be taking a huge move towards boosting their chances of top flight survival. However, the visitors then conceded scored four goals during the second 45 minutes to suffer a crushing loss as they couldn’t take what would have been a morale-boosting move out of the bottom three.

It stretched Luton’s winless run to eight games at the time, and saw them fail to build on a 1-1 draw at Crystal Palace just a few days earlier, as speaking to the BBC’s Monday Night Club programme, Townsend felt that the Hatters’ inability to pick up results over the last few months, now on a run of just one victory in 15 league encounters, has led to a real sense of disappointment, saying: “I can only speak for myself, but I think it was in late January, early February, we beat Brighton at home four-nil. Three days later we went to St James’ Park and were four-two up against Newcastle and we ended up drawing that game four-all and our season sort of crumbled since then.

"Honestly almost every night I go to bed thinking about being three-nil up against Bournemouth and losing four-three, losing at home three-one to Sheffield United and having so many opportunities, losing in the last minute against Spurs. All these times that we were so close to getting what looks like now a crucial three points or a crucial point and we just let it slip away, so for myself, there is massive amount of frustration.”

Townsend did point to the crippling injury list suffered by the Hatters as a major reason behind their poor form, as he continued: “I think since that Newcastle game we have been very unfortunate with injuries too. I know the manager hasn’t made that excuse, but we did lose a lot of key players, (Elijah) Adebayo our top scorer, Sambi Lokonga who’s probably been one of our best players this season, we lost him to large chunks of that second half of the season.

"Myself, I didn’t play in that Newcastle game, but I came off that pitch thinking wow, we've just gone 4-2 up, we've just gone toe to toe with one of the best sides in Europe in terms of at home, it’s a fortress and we almost beat them, so I was more positive than ever. But after that it’s just been injury after injury and we're just getting players back now, probably too late, but hopefully not.”

Despite struggling for wins and their chances of remaining in the highest tier of English football beginning to look bleak, Luton realistically relegated if they lost at West Ham tomorrow, Town boss Rob Edwards has remained exceedingly positive about his side’s chances of staying up, believing this is a position that all fans would have taken when the campaign kicked off back in August. It’s something that Townsend fully appreciates as well, continuing: “The manager has been great in saying yes we should be frustrated, we probably should be closer to tenth than the relegation zone, but if we were offered this at the start of the season we would have snapped your hand off.

"That’s the manager's way of staying positive as he knows there’s been times in games where we just haven’t managed to see it out. As a player I’ve played many years and you feed off your manager’s energy. So if your manager comes in and he's downbeat, he’s sad, he’s angry, he’s frustrated, we feed off that and we feed off that in training and we sort of project that on the pitch.

"It’s so tough, but the manager has been great all season in just being positive, being bright and just showing us the positives in every negative, it’s kept us going. Now it's two weeks from the end of the season and it's not a crisis for us. He's seeing the positives and saying if we do our business in the last two games we can get out of it, so for us the manager has been great in taking the pressure off us.”

Luton missed another invitation to close the gap on nearest rivals Forest last Friday as they could only manage a 1-1 draw against Everton at Kenilworth Road. A late spell of pressure almost saw the hosts nick victory, Luke Berry and Townsend himself seeing goalbound efforts deflected away, as the ex-Toffees player added: “I had one literally the last second of the game, I thought it was in, but (Jarrad) Branthwaite made a great block.

"It wasn’t meant to be for us on Friday night, but like the table shows, we’re still alive, we're still kicking, so we have to look at the positive and just hope and pray and believe that we will get out of this situation.”