Naismith never wants to see the Hatters out-battled at Kenilworth Road again

Defender Kal Naismith doesn’t ever want to see a Luton team get out-battled on home soil again after they capitulated to a 5-0 defeat against Birmingham City on Saturday.

As the scoreline would suggest, the Hatters were second best for the majority of the contest at Kenilworth Road, suffering a heaviest defeat since Reading also ran out 5-0 winners back in July 2020.

It was a timid display that bitterly disappointed Naismith, captain on the day, as he said: “We had a lot of chances in the game, it’s hard to try and dissect it now because it’s just pure disappointment, but we had a lot of balls flash across the front with a few good breaks where just a better touch would have had us in.

“It’s not good enough though, I feel we were out-battled which is disappointing as it never happens at this place, never happens at home.

“Even when I’ve played here with previous teams, you come here and it’s a horrible, horrible game.

“We’ll get beat, we’ll get beat again, that happens, but not enough battle.”

Falling behind so early on for the second game in three this term was equally frustrating for Naismith as it gave Blues confidence in which to settle into the contest.

He continued: “It’s horrible because you want to start well and then to concede so early.

“Football’s crazy because we get beat 5-0 but if you look at the chance we had early on, a great ball in, if Elijah (Adebayo) can get something on it, and Locks (Tom Lockyer) gets a great header on it and it’s just unfortunate to hit the goalie.

“I think it hits him in the face, if that goes in the momentum of the game is different, but you can nitpick all those little things.”

Despite trailing 2-0 at the break and 3-0 moments afterwards, Naismith had expected more fight to be shown by the Hatters, even though a comeback looked unlikely, as he added: “It’s a hard one to take, but you’ve got to take it on the chin.

“It’s a tough league and if we play like that then you’ve got to take it, you’ve got to face it.

“We weren’t good enough, it’s disappointing coming off the back of Tuesday night (1-0 win over Barnsley).

“It’s difficult when you go three down, two-nil you know you’re still in it, three-nil it’s difficult, especially when we had a good start to the second half.

“You’ve seen teams come back from that, but I just felt we had to react better, that’s every single one of us who were on the pitch and we never, which is disappointing.

“You concede five goals, it’s not good enough.

“I always say we defend as whole team and we attack as a whole team.

“It comes from the front as well and when we get clean sheets everyone should be praised and when we concede five it’s not good, but of course as a defender you’re job is to keep the ball out of the net and it’s a bad day for us.”