Town midfielder demands Luton put 'sloppy' O's display behind them

Luton midfielder Liam Walsh is desperate that the Hatters put right what he deemed a ‘sloppy’ performance during the 1-1 draw at Leyton Orient on Tuesday night when hosting Port Vale at Kenilworth Road this afternoon.

The 28-year-old was one of eight changes made by boss Jack Wilshere for the contest at the BetWright Stadium from their FA Cup second round exit at League Two Fleetwood Town on Saturday, but despite going with what was considered a stronger team in east London, the visitors could not get going at all, with their passing accuracy far lower than it should be, giving the ball away time and time again.

A fairly terrible first half saw Luton then breached early in the second period when a mistake by skipper Kal Naismith was pounced on by the O’s attackers, before it needed a sparkling cameo from the fit-again Jordan Clark to inject some much-needed life into the Hatters, who managed to equalise in stoppage time when Walsh’s corner was headed in by Gideon Kodua for yet another late goal from the West Ham loanee.

The leveller did stretch Town’s unbeaten league run to three games and they will now be trying to extend that to four when facing the division’s bottom side at 3pm, as Walsh said: “Straight after the game we’re being hard on ourselves as that performance wasn’t us. I think the gaffer’s already said that and we felt it on the pitch in the first half.

"There were too many sloppy things happening for us, but we’re away from home, we’ve got a point on the board and we can just make that result even better on Saturday by getting three points. We were tough on ourselves with the Leyton Orient one, but if we go there on Saturday and get the three points it’s a positive, it’s four points out of two games. We’re just going to take it game by game and try to get as many maximum points as we can.”

Asked if the manager had shown a different side to himself in the changing room after a performance he clearly wasn’t happy with either, Walsh continued: “I wouldn’t say angry, it was just more wanting to get a lot more out of us as he sees us every day in training. Even myself and the lads, we go in first and the first thing we do is pull each other up, things we can be doing better at, and I think that was everyone. Even the fans there, you can see how frustrated everyone was with the first half. We came out second half and were much more on top, but we know ourselves, we need to be doing that from minute one so that’s what we’ll definitely be doing on Saturday.”

One thing that did please Walsh was his assist for the goal, a second of the season for the midfielder, as having been on set-piece duty for much of the campaign, hadn’t seen one come off yet despite another number of inviting crosses into the danger area. It was an area Wilshere had wanted to see improve too as the former Everton teenager said: “I feel like I’m doing the right deliveries, we’re just a yard or a couple of inches off it, so for one to go in the way it did, I’m happy to get the assist and hopefully I can get a few more of those this season.

“Gids is brilliant. We spoke about it, the amount of times he’s come on and helped the team because most of his goals have been from the bench, so when you see players coming on like that and making a difference, it doesn’t half give you confidence and he’s been brilliant for us and hopefully he can keep scoring.”

Although on paper, a home win against League One’s basement side would be the banker for many this afternoon, goalkeeper James Shea knows it isn’t always like that, as being favourites comes with its own pressure. He said: “I think that’s one of the hardest things this season, expectation. We’re expected to go and win, go and be 3-0 up at half time every game and it’s not that easy. You’ve got to wear teams down, especially teams coming to the Kenny. They put 11 men behind the ball and say break us down and we’ve got to find a way.

"It might not be in the first 10 minutes, it might not be in the first half, but we’ve got to keep working at it and hopefully get the chance and when we get one, that becomes two, but a big game this weekend which we do need to win. It wasn’t the best of games (on Tuesday), but after the loss to Barnsley we’ve gone three games on the bounce in the league unbeaten. If we can get a win on Saturday we’re five points from three games and you’re thinking that’s not too bad. Let’s hopefully get a win on Saturday and see where we are after.”

Attacker Jacob Brown was of the same opinion as both of his team-mates too, adding: “We knew ourselves that it (Leyton Orient game) wasn’t a performance that we know we can give, but I suppose a positive to take from that is we got the point and if we can go away and try and get wins and take points and be more dominant at home then we can go in the right direction.

“It’s the same as we have for all the games as I feel like the expectation is on us in every game, whether we’re playing first, second in the league, or bottom of the league. We go in with the same expectation, we know what we can produce and what we need to do to do that. We want to keep a clean sheet and score more goals, so we just need to keep doing that.”