Town chief claims Morris's display against Watford was his 'best game ever' for Luton

Luton striker Carlton Morris was one of a number of players who produced their best ever performance for the Hatters under boss Rob Edwards during Saturday’s 3-0 thrashing of Watford according to the manager himself.

The 28-year-old was back in the side after a spell out with injury, and was clearly up for the challenge well before the first whistle went, adopting the role of cheerleader during the warm-up. It was something he then continued when the Hatters won a corner right in front of the boisterous home supporters, which saw Town break the deadlock thanks to Jordan Clark’s inadvertent deflection from Alfie Doughty’s set-piece that was volleyed goalwards by Tom Holmes.

Morris was already catching the eye with his bullying of home defender Mattie Pollock, while easily outmuscling Ryan Andrews when he foolishly tried to go shoulder to shoulder with him, while his physical strength ensured former Juventus centre back Angelo Ogbonnah, who was in the Premier League with West Ham until just recently, looked anything but on the day.

With Town going back to the kind of system and tactics that suit the forward down the ground too, working the channels and being a bit more direct than in recent matches, he combined well with strike partner Elijah Adebayo, almost setting his team-mate up during the first half too. Most importantly though, Morris did what he is paid to do, finding space just two minutes into the second half to bury a downward header from another Doughty corner beyond the grasp of Daniel Bachmann and put the Hatters 2-0 to the good.

Although he had to come off with 20 minutes to go for fear of tiring, it was still enough to earn him the sponsor’s man of the match award, as on his efforts, Edwards said: “He was brilliant. I’d heard his speech before the game was the best the lads have ever heard, so that was good, but he was just really, really up for it, as he had been all week. Again, this is what I’ve challenged him and the rest of the boys. We’ve seen that, we’ve felt that, that’s what it’s got to be all the time.

"We’re human beings, we’re not robots, so it’s difficult to go and be the same, every game’s difficult, it brings different challenges, you can’t always be at your peak all of the time. But Carlton in particular, set almost a new level for himself there. He’s been brilliant for us since we’ve come in, for two years now. I think that was, even though he didn’t get through the whole game, that was arguably his best ever game under us. I think there were actually a few that come under that, I thought Alfie was as well.”

With Morris alongside Adebayo once more, the pair looked to carry the kind of attacking threat that Luton’s supporters had expected to continue from the Premier League where both impressively reached double figures. Although Morris is now up to three for the season, Adebayo is still yet to find the net in his 11 outings thus far, denied by Bachmann late on when having been played through by Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu. Despite that, Edwards continued: "He was incredible and watching a lot of it back, he’d have done things that people watching wouldn’t necessarily see but was so effective and so helpful to the whole performance.

"Some of his pressing backwards was so effective and he’s another one, Eli’s been working really, really hard, that was another level again. So he’s set himself a standard there again. When he performs like that, works that hard, is that much of a handful, of course I want him to score, he does, everyone does, but I don’t really care, because someone else will. Those two gave us an unbelievable platform to play from.”

With Morris and Adebayo causing such havoc, it saw Luton finally score three goals in a game this term, the first time they had done that on home soil since beating Brighton & Hove Albion 4-0 back in January. Clark and Jacob Brown were the beneficiaries of Town’s improved attacking outlet, as the Hatters have now managed to find the net seven times in their last three home fixtures.

Edwards added: “Sheff U aside, we’ve still created chances in a lot of the games but we haven’t scored as many goals and we know that. We want to be more ruthless and take chances. I think the first goal, getting that element of luck with the first one helped, and it was nice to get a couple more.”