Naismith felt nothing changed ahead of Luton's brilliant upturn in form
Town skipper hails the work done by Wilshere and his backroom staff
Luton skipper Kal Naismith declared that nothing really changed for the Hatters ahead of their dramatic turnaround in form last term.
A 1-1 draw at Doncaster Rovers on March 10 saw Town fail to win for a sixth successive League One game, jeered off once more by those who had made the midweek trip to the Keepmoat Stadium, as any hopes of reaching the play-offs appeared extinguished, the visitors slipping to 12th in the table, seven points behind the top six with 10 games left.
However, a run of seven wins and two draws meant Luton, who swapped manager in October, ex-Arsenal and England star Jack Wilshere replacing Matt Bloomfield, went into the final game of the campaign at Bolton Wanderers last month with hopes of catching one of three teams inside the play-offs if they won and other results went their way. Naismith and his team-mates kept up their end of the bargain by triumphing 3-2, but victories for Stockport, Bradford and Stevenage meant they ended up finishing in seventh spot, just one point away from their goal.
Asked just what he felt changed among the squad, whose morale had appeared on the floor, that led them to put such a sequence of results together, Naismith said: “Nothing, that’s the truth. Since the gaffer’s come in, you see it now and I feel sorry for managers as they come in and they’re judged so instantly. Everyone says managers need time, managers need time, the fans don’t really understand what it is, the time that it is, but the amount of detail, tactically, that the manager gives us, it’s hard to get it straight away.
"He’s stuck with it, we’ve been regimented with the processes and the things we follow. We’ve always been training hard, there’s always been a good atmosphere at the training ground, but you just see the consistency, the boys are getting the detail. We’re starting to click and we’re getting it better at what the manager wants from us. I knew as an older player, when the manager came in and seeing the process from him and the staff, I knew this was always coming, the consistency.
"I knew we were always going to get it, it’s just getting everyone else to see it and believe it in and ultimately pick it up as it’s a huge level of detail. He’s telling us stuff that, I’ve played the game a long time, and I’ve never heard it. You sit back and see the detail he’s giving us and you say ‘wow, it really, really works.’ So then it’s just working on it so you can get it every time. There’s still bits we need to improve on and we’re going to get a lot better working with the gaffer, that’s for sure.”
What was also noticeable was just how Town improved after the final international break of the campaign, as following a fortnight at the Brache, they came back and beat Peterborough 2-1, before thumping AFC Wimbledon 3-0. Luton also outclassed Stockport to lift the Vertu Trophy at Wembley and ended with seven victories from their last eight matches, as what benefit they got from having that chunk of time on the training ground, Naismith added: “I think it was huge.
"You hear managers always talk about having a pre-season, as having a pre-season, I think that is the actual best time for a manager to get so much detail in day in day out, day in day out, and not worry about the load, are you doing too much, are you going to be fresh for the game? There was a lot of games, but straight after the game was done we had the international break, we had a bit of time to rest, but not much and we were straight back in.
"We did a whole overview after the manager had been in, the processes and what we want to do moving forward. What training we were going to do, how every single training day looks for that two weeks. Just being able to step back and me seeing it as an older player, how much detail that the manager and staff put in was incredible, you wouldn’t even know the half of it.”
Although the players were the ones who went out on the pitch and got the results that saw Luton go so close, Naismith was eager to shift a lot of the praise to the management staff who have come in since October, as the Town captain said: “It’s been huge. I always say the most important people at the football club are the players, without good players you can’t do anything, but for me this time it’s honestly been the staff.
"The staff need huge credit, I said it even when we weren’t getting the results when they initially came in, just how much they uplifted everyone and stuck with us and stuck with us and that’s everyone, not just the gaffer, Powelly (Chris Powell), everyone. They’ve just been incredible from the minute they’ve come in. They’ve seen we were a little bit broken and needed a little bit of help, and the way he wasn’t screaming at us and telling us how bad we were, it was put an arm around us and they just got every single thing right.
"After games when we got beat or training sessions when we're a little a bit ratting at each other as we wanted better, they just dealt with every situation incredibly. You see it coming to fruition now, we just love being out there playing, we always had good players and good lads, but we just needed that nurturing to get us back to believing in ourselves.”
With Luton unable to achieve their goals this term, Naismith was asked if their struggles had been down to a heavier expectation on them to when they were last in the division, actually winning it in 2019 to reach the Championship, the year after they had come up via the League Two play-offs. Although he wasn’t part of the side who were crowned champions, he added: “In terms of comparison, it’s hard I feel that as a club there wasn’t as much expectation on us that year, and also I just feel that we were consistently stable throughout that season.
"We never lost back-to-back games, if we lost, we bounced back, whereas this season has been a little bit different, we’ve battled with that. We’ve had a big expectation on us so that’s brought a lot of pressure. We’ve been dealing with pressures mentally and inconsistencies, but we’ve certainly picked up.
“Winning just breeds winning, and that’s when we could never just get that third win on the bounce, or that fourth, because then it just grows and grows and grows and snowballs from there. That’s what I say about consistency, some games you can play poorly but you still get the win, and we’ve got that now, we’ve been incredibly consistent.”