Second half Cherries capitulation left Hatters boss feeling 'angry, upset and numb'

A hugely disappointed Hatters boss Rob Edwards admitted he was left feeling ‘angry, upset and numb’ with his side’s error-strewn second half performance after Luton became just the third team in Premier League history to finish up losing a game having led 3-0 at half time when beaten 4-3 by AFC Bournemouth last night.

For 45 glorious minutes, it had looked like Town would take a massive step towards top flight survival as they continued the momentum gained from a last-gasp 1-1 draw at Crystal Palace on Saturday by racing into a 2-0 advantage with just half an hour gone, Tahith Chong and Chiedozie Ogbene finishing off slick counter-attacking moves from close range. They were then looking odds-on to secure a sixth victory of the season when Ross Barkley raced through to blast into the root of the net on the stroke of half time and put his side 3-0 in front, moving above third bottom Nottingham Forest in the process. However, the Cherries, who were booed off, had other ideas, swiftly pulling one back through top scorer Dominic Solanke to raise the belief and noise levels inside the Vitality Stadium.

Town simply couldn’t cope from then on, breached twice in the space of two minutes as their lead was frittered away with just 20 minutes gone of the second period, the inevitable fourth goal arriving when Antoine Semenyo was allowed the freedom of Dorset to sprint away and beat a shell-shocked Thomas Kaminski, as the Hatter remained below the dotted line once more. Having seen his side join Leicester in 2003 and Spurs in 2001 as the only other teams to leave empty-handed from such a position of authority when changing ends, asked for his emotions afterwards, Edwards said: “Angry, upset, all of that right now, little bit numb I suppose.

“I’ll have to look back at it and be able to break it down in real detail, but right now I feel we didn’t defend in our duels well enough. I’m not going to dig anyone out right now in front of you guys, but there were some individual mistakes, one v one duels that we didn’t cope well enough with in the second half. We gave them encouragement with the early goal, the crowd really got up then and we weren’t quite able to then cope with that barrage, that forward play, forward running, the power that they’ve got. So really, really frustrating and hard to come out and speak to right now with the way I feel.

“I can go through all four of the goals which I’ve done with the lads, they can all be avoided. There’s three or four mistakes for each one, but we put ourselves in such a good position to win a Premier League game, never mind get a point, which is really difficult for us to do and to be sat here now talking about a defeat is tough.”

It was a case of lightning striking twice for the Hatters, as they had conceded four goals in just 45 minutes of football for the second time in under a month, having seen Liverpool do the same at Anfield, Jurgen Klopp’s title-chasers turning a 1-0 deficit into a rampant 4-1 success. Edwards praised the way the Cherries were able to dismantle the visitors, but was annoyed that they hadn’t taken on board what had happened on Merseyside, continuing: “We want to be able to manage it, we’ve got to learn from that. We talked about what Anfield can do to people, it’s not just us where that’s happened, but I’d have liked to have thought that we learnt from that situation.

"There were similarities to that, wave after wave and two poor decisions gives them belief again. Things I won’t go into now where we can just be better, be cuter. The best teams are just cuter at the right moments. Head it back to the goalkeeper rather than a pass back, then he’s under pressure and kicks it out for a throw in, things like that made us come undone and come unstuck tonight. So we’ll revisit some of that and we’ve got some really tough away games to come, so we’ve got to try and be better in those moments.

“There was some really good play from Bournemouth, they have got some really good players here as well, and again I’m taking responsibility, I, we have got to be better in those moments, but there was some brilliant play from them as well. We just couldn’t quite cope with those key periods, I thought at 3-3, the game had settled for a little bit and thought we had actually weathered the storm and then you never know, a set-piece or something like that, which we did have, we might be able to get a grip back on the game, but the fourth goal was really disappointing the way we concede that.”

Town did have their moments at times in the second period, Chong denied a second goal by the offside flag which would have made it 4-1, while at 3-3, Barkley put a wonderful chance over the bar after Carlton Morris’s header dropped to him a few yards out. Edwards added: “It could have been (different), we can always talk about what ifs. I think it came off Carlton’s shoulder the initial one and it looked like a good chance from where I was, but I don't know how quickly it came to him, how awkward the bounce was, I haven't seen that one back.”