Town chief admits his confidence has been knocked following Luton's poor start

Luton boss Rob Edwards has admitted that his confidence has taken a knock following such a poor start to the season, although he is still intent on giving his all to try and turn things around at Kenilworth Road.

Despite being relegated from the Premier League last term, the Hatters chief was awarded a new four year contract in the summer, as he retained the full support of both the Hatters board and the fans to lead them back to the top flight at the first attempt, setting that out as his clear goal during pre-season. Those hopes have faded quite significantly after an opening 12 games of the season that has seen Town lose seven games already, including a demoralising 3-2 reverse at Coventry City last weekend in which they had led 2-0 just before the hour mark.

It saw the Luton manager come in for some stick from Town fans for the second away game running, having also heard chants of ‘Edwards sort it out’ at Bramall Lane before the international break after a tame 2-0 reverse. With the Hatters boss usually a figure who exudes real confidences, asked whether that had taken a dent due to their inconsistent form, Edwards said: “I think it affects everything.

"For me to sit here in front of you and say I’m fine, no, it doesn’t affect my confidence, I’d be lying. I’m a human being, of course it does. Any manager will have doubts over the course of their careers, and fears, and all of those sorts of things and you’ve got to then stick to your beliefs and what’s brought us success in the past and work really, really hard.

"Sometimes you come through it and sometimes you don’t and we know what happens when the results don’t change, that’s just the nature of the game we’re in. “It’s not a nice feeling losing games and we’re not in the position that we want to be in so of course it hurts, it kills me.”

On whether he takes the pressure of Luton’s struggles on the pitch home with him, or if he is able to switch off away from football, Edwards continued: “I don’t think anyone in this position does. You can try, however you do it, time with the family, or walk the dog, or try and watch a boxset, whatever it might be, but it’s always there. I try to as best as possible, I’ve got a brilliant team of people around me, and everyone shares it and feels it. We all want the club to be doing really and at the moment we’re suffering a little bit.

"It's not as easy as just being able to flick a switch and turn things around. There's lots of factors, but the stuff that we’ve got to try and and lean on is that there has been good performances, only last week, so that will give us confidence. When you’re around the place and on the training pitch it doesn't feel like a group that’s struggling for confidence or belief, so that does give me confidence and belief that we can turn the performances into wins and then consistency as well.”

Although suffering relegation last term, Edwards’ efforts in trying to keep the Hatters up, despite injuries decimating their hopes, earned real praise from the footballing fraternity. That came on the back of a season in which he won the Championship play-offs with Town, while before that, he secured the League Two title when in charge at Forest Green Rovers.

Now he hopes he can come through this extremely tough period, even if he felt last season wasn’t quite the achievement others had thought, saying: “I don’t think last season was a success, we got relegated. I think it’s been incredibly stressful for quite a period of time, probably from around December when that (cardiac arrest) happened to Tom (Lockyer) and there’s just been a lot to deal with constantly.

"It’s been difficult, but you’ve got to just soldier on and keep pushing and believing in what we do and hope then that things will turn. We’ve shown some decent signs in the last week, Saturday was just probably one game too far with such a quick turnaround and us probably not having enough people to freshen things up.

"There’s no doubt we were second best on Saturday, but the two games before that we were pretty good and could have warranted two wins, but only one came to fruition, so it’s a challenging period at the moment. Most managers go through it at some stage in their career, and everyone’s telling me you'll come out of it and be better for it.”

On whether he thinks will come out of it with his job at Kenilworth Road intact, Edwards added: “I hope so. I understand the pressure to get results, that’s the name of the game, that’s the business that we’re in, I accept that, so that’s what we’ve got to do. We’ve got to make sure we’re doing our jobs and doing them really, and then we know we've got a lot of quality in the building that can gets results in this league.

"Last week was two defeats in the end, but there were two good performances there that I thought were winning performances so we’ll lean a lot on that. We know at home, at Kenilworth Road, that it is different for a lot of teams and we’ve got to make sure that West Brom feel that.”