'Tough day' for Luton boss Wilshere as he blames 'easy goals' for Tykes drubbing

Luton boss Jack Wilshere felt his side were guilty of conceding far too many ‘easy goals’ after what he described as a ‘tough day’ during what was a truly embarrassing 5-0 defeat at Barnsley this afternoon.

The Hatters had rocked up at Oakwell full of confidence having gone five unbeaten in all competitions and keeping three successive clean sheets for the first time in over two years, but proceeded to turn in an error-strewn performance at Oakwell, with almost every mistake seized upon by the Tykes, who ran in five goals without response.

The first arrived on seven minutes when Zack Nelson’s pass inside was cut out, allowing Reyes Cleary to be sent through to lob Josh Keeley, with Town’s goalkeeper then giving the ball away in the build-up to Patrick Kelly’s second on 35 minutes. Midfielder Liam Walsh fouled top scorer Davis Keillor-Dunn before half time for a free kick that Luca Connell curled beyond a hapless Keeley, while after the break, Gideon Kodua put through his own net, as Keillor-Dunn Dunn outwitted Kal Naismith to make it 5-0 with 15 minutes still remaining.

It could have been a heavier defeat if Adam Phillips hadn’t shot wide late on, as on his own side’s woeful inability to keep the ball out of their net, Wilshere said: “I think we started the game okay and we had some moments, they had some moments as well, but I feel like we gave opportunities up too easily. We have to take our chances, we have to be clinical as in this league teams will come back at you as they did and then we gave away too many easy goals and it becomes difficult as you’re chasing, so it was a tough day. I think we have to have more quality definitely, at times we showed some nice moments, we just have to be more consistent with that.

"We have to maximise our opportunities in the final third for sure and we have to make sure we’re controlling their players up the pitch when we are attacking, because we’re conceding in transition moments and we will face that a lot this season because we want to be the team that takes the ball and dominates it. It was way, way, way too easy today and technical efficiency is what I call it. We work on it every day, we have to get better at it, we have to be better on the ball at times, but too many easy goals.

"It’s a tough one to analyse right now, I need to get on the bus and watch it back to really see the goals, the positions we were in, the errors we made, as I said to the players before, I feel like we’re growing defensively. It’s important in this team that we defend with everyone, we’re compact, and we’ve done that really well since I’ve come in. We’ve kept some clean sheets and I was thinking going into the game, defensively we’ve been okay, we need to get better going forward, like we saw against Rotherham, but defensively we weren’t good enough today.”