Naismith admits to a sense of 'if only' after Luton miss out on the play-offs
Skipper looks back on what could have happened during the campaign
Luton captain Kal Naismith admitted there will be a sense of ‘if only’ after his team failed to reach the play-offs despite beating Bolton Wanderers 3-2 in their final game of the League One season on Saturday.
The Hatters headed to the Toughsheet Stadium at the weekend knowing what they had to do, get all three points and then hope that one of Stockport County, Bradford City or Stevenage lost. It looked like that was going to happen when Shayden Morris tapped in a stoppage time winner, but sadly, Boro had also just grabbed a controversial goal in their home match against Wigan Athletic to lead 1-0, and with no Latics leveller coming, it meant Town’s best efforts were in vain.
A look at the league table showed Luton finished just a single point adrift of the top six, and asked if he would reflect on the dropped points against sides like Port Vale, Burton Albion and Exeter City, plus gifting Reading victory at Kenilworth Road having been 2-1 up late on, Naismith said: “Of course. You’re always going to do that as when the full time whistle goes it’s tough because there’s so many moments running through my head.
"There's some obvious stand-outs, if only that happened, if only that happened, if only we scored that goal, but you can say that to every single team. There’s 24 teams competing and there will be moments for everyone. At the end of the day, mistakes happen in football, down days happen, off days happen, they’re the teams that have done it, they’ve been more consistent and I think we’ve got a lot to learn.”
The fact that Luton were able to end Bolton’s long unbeaten run on home soil and become just the second team to beat them in front of their own fans, Mansfield the last in December, despite trailing 2-1 with half an hour to go, should be seen as another feather in Luton’s cap according to Naismith, who continued: “It’s the story of our season, we just never give up, we never know when we’re beaten.
"Who would have said we would come into this last game with a chance of getting into the play-offs? No-one, no one would have said that. Again, 2-1 down against a team who have been beaten once at home, who would have said we would come back and win that game and give ourselves a chance? No-one. But we believe, the staff believe in us, the fans believed in us at the end and I’m just proud of everyone.”
It was the same for manager Jack Wilshere as asked if he would look back and think ‘if only’, having seen all of the teams who were in the battle for a top six berth emerge triumphant on the final day, added: “I think I will because up until this point you don’t really try and reflect, it’s always about the next game and learning from the last game, but moving on to the next game. We’ve done that really well, but now it’s the end of the season it’s time to do that.
“It will be interesting to see how many times that’s happened this season when all the teams have won at the same time, but I said it before the game, all we can do is focus on ourselves. We knew the situation and that’s why we made a few changes. Even though I felt probably Bolton at that point were looking a little bit more like scoring we wanted to score a goal so we made some changes to make that happen and we did that but unfortunately the other results went the other way.”