Town boss admits Baggies capitulation was one of his most 'painful experiences'

Luton boss Matt Bloomfield insists a line had to quickly be drawn under what he described as ‘one of the most painful experiences of my life’, Town’s capitulation at West Bromwich Albion on the final day of the 2024-25 campaign.

The Hatters had gone into the contest on the back of their best spell of form all season with five wins and three draws from nine, including three victories in a row, seeing them climb out of the drop zone and give themselves every chance of being able to end a wretched campaign by still calling themselves a Championship club.

Knowing a point could have been enough, with victory definitely completing the job, Town then found themselves 3-1 down to the Baggies at half time, a scoreline which swiftly became 5-1 with just over an hour gone, as the visitors’ produced an awful defensive display which was met with angry jeers from their thousands of travelling fans. Although Jordan Clark and Milli Alli pulled late goals back, Hull’s 1-1 draw at Portsmouth was enough to see the Tigers stay up at the expense of Luton, condemning the Hatters to an unwanted campaign in League One.

Discussing having to go through a 90 minutes like that, Bloomfield said: “You can’t affect the past. As much as it was one of the most painful experiences of my life, without a shadow of a doubt, a line had to be drawn as you can only affect the future, you can’t affect what’s been and done. That's history now and as a football manager you have to be focused on what’s next and as a football club we want to give our supporters something exciting.

“We want to give them a team that they can be really proud of, really excited to watch. I want them to look forward to turning up to the Kenny on a Saturday afternoon and nothing would give me greater joy than to provide them with that, so we had to be really, really quick to move on from that. Whilst the pain was there obviously, we moved on as quickly as we possibly could and got our focus on the future.”

Asked just what he thought went wrong on the day at the Hawthorns, Bloomfield added: “Lots, there was lots that went wrong on that day. I don't really want to go back to it too much to be honest as I want to keep the focus on the future. It was a tough week, there were injuries, there were lots of things going on during the week that weren’t right. During the game there were some performances that I was far from happy with, which was really disappointing considering where we were as a football club, but we’ve dealt with some of that the best we possibly can, as swiftly as we possibly can.

"We hope that we’ve got a freshness about us that we can look forward. Inevitably when you lose a game there’s lots of things that could happen differently to win, but it was a painful experience and it was one that we don’t want to repeat again. We want to make sure we have smiles on faces and a good experience for our supporters this season.”

Questioned as to whether there were any specific lessons he had learned from what was a lonely experience on the sidelines during the contest, Bloomfield said: “Not necessarily just from that game but I know as a manager you have to do what’s right, not what’s popular. You have to make decisions that you believe are in the best interests of a winning team, not what’s necessarily seen to be the popular choice and that has been a mantra that I’ve tried to live by since I’ve done this for three years,

“The reliance of no matter where you’re getting to in this game, there’s always a risk around the corner of someone punching you on the nose and you have to get up and carry on. The resilience and belief in yourself to believe what you know you can achieve has to be really deep because there’s lots of tests and if you don't have resilience, this game can eat you up, so having that resilience and mindset to be better at all times.

“Looking in the mirror first before looking out the window too. I spent a long time over the summer looking in the mirror, what could I have done differently? What could we have done differently? What should we or could we have done to mitigate against those circumstances? What could we have done easier? Lots of things.

“If you’re not willing to be honest with yourself and willing to look in the mirror first, you're in the wrong job. In life I believe you have to look at yourself first, what could I have done better? But there’s lots that went into that, so I’ve learned lots about myself and about the group, tried to evolve it to a place, off the back of those lessons, tried to adjust things to be stronger coming out the other side.”