'Painful moment' for Bloomfield as Luton are relegated from the Championship

Luton boss Matt Bloomfield conceded that relegation back to League One this afternoon was a ‘painful moment’ for the club.

The Hatters had gone into their last day contest at West Bromwich Albion in confident mood they could retain their Championship status, last weekend’s 1-0 victory over Coventry City making it three successive wins and lifting them out of the bottom three. However, they were swiftly back in it, as despite Milli Alli levelling on nine minutes, Town trailed 3-1 at the break, the Baggies extending that advantage to an embarrassing 5-1 by the hour mark.

Although Jordan Clark and Alli pulled back two more goals, Hull’s 1-1 draw at Portsmouth ensured they were able to leapfrog Luton and stay up at the expense of the Kenilworth Road club, who suffered a second successive drop in divisions, as they were booed off by an angry away end of just over 2,500 travelling supporters at the final whistle.

Speaking afterwards, asked to sum up the result, but more the woeful nature of the performance on a day when Town needed to be at their best, Bloomfield said: “Disappointment, frustration, it’s a particularly painful moment for us and everyone associated with our football club. It’s a really disappointing performance considering the day and the performance that we needed to get ourselves out of where we were, so particularly painful. I’m sorry to our supporters for travelling up and down the country supporting us this season, and we understand their disappointment and anger right now.

“I don’t know (why it was so bad), the distances from front to back weren’t enough, we didn't get close enough and win our duels, very, very disappointing. The goals we gave away were so disappointing. We’ve been incredibly resilient in the last few months to really shore up at the back and unfortunately today it just wasn't there. We need to analyse that and find out why, because it has been on show for two months. We spoke about the defensive resilience that we’ve had, but today it wasn't good enough.”

Town were cut open on their left hand side for the majority of the contest, as Teden Mengi and Amari’i Bell in particular struggled massively to deal with Tom Fellows, who scored twice, the Hatters’ defending constantly leaving plenty to be desired. Bloomfield added: “He (Fellows) carried a massive threat, he’s a very good player. We didn't shuffle laterally enough as a five to become a three and four when we needed to to release a wingback, so that was disappointing.

"We've worked hard on our shape in the last three months, and today it wasn’t on show. At that point (3-1 down) they looked a little bit shocked, the psychological aspect was tough for them to take on at the moment. We needed to get in at half time and regroup, make another plan, but we gave away two more really disappointing goals which gave ourselves a mountain to climb.”