Wilshere admits it's back to the drawing board after Wigan defeat

Hatters boss Jack Wilshere admitted he would have to go back to the drawing board after his change in formation didn’t work during yet another utterly woeful display on the road when losing 1-0 at Wigan Athletic on Wednesday night.

The Luton chief went with two upfront from the start for first time in his tenure at Kenilworth Road, with on-loan Ipswich Town forward Ali Al-Hamadi getting his full debut, partnering January addition Devante Cole in attack. It was meant to give Luton more oomph in the final third, but unfortunately never panned out that way, neither forward able to get a shot on target throughout their time on the pitch, Al-Hamadi close to turning in a Jake Richards cross during the first half, with Cole’s best work coming when closing down his opponents and trying to either win the ball back or holding it up when under pressure.

It continued into the second half too, the Latics easily the more dominant force, showing them how it’s done when ex-Hatter Joe Taylor was sent away to coolly dink the ball over the onrushing Josh Keeley. Al-Hamadi was replaced in the closing stages as Nahki Wells came on, but bar a spell of pinball inside the box during stoppage time, Cole inadvertently getting in the way of Davy van den Berg’s goalbound shot, it was yet another away reverse, Luton’s sixth in a row, with very little in the way of the genuine opportunities that Wilshere had been after.

Speaking afterwards, asked to sum up his feelings, the Town chief said: “With disappointment, with frustration, with question marks about why we didn’t execute certain things better and then didn’t start the second half anywhere near well enough. We allowed them to build momentum and it’s difficult when you lose that in this league and when you lose momentum and you’re chasing it. You’re playing against a team with a new manager, they start to get on the front foot, put balls in your box, play on the front foot, we didn’t manage it well enough so a frustrating evening.

“We wanted to try something different as clearly what we’ve been trying away from home hasn’t been working. We wanted to have a different kind of threat, use what we’ve got in the building, we’ve got two nines that have a presence, that can run behind but we didn’t do it. We spoke about doing it, we spoke about their high line, but we couldn’t execute it well enough. We wanted to try something different because it hasn’t been working, and we’ll have to go back to the drawing board because that didn’t work either.

“We wanted more threat, I think we had more threat than we did on Saturday (at Cardiff) but still not enough threat against a team that I felt we were good enough to beat and we should have some belief, some confidence going into it, that we can beat them. Yes it’s not going to be easy and you have to do all the things that win you a game in winning your duels, landing on second balls, competing, all that stuff, which I think we did, but then we lacked the quality to have a real threat.”

With Wigan themselves struggling hugely this term, without a win since December 2 and losing five in a row in all competitions, they sacked Ryan Lowe as manager recently and appointed Exeter’s Gary Caldwell on Monday who had already engineered a 1-0 success over Town on New Year’s Day when in charge of the Grecians.

With that in mind Wilshere set his side up to hopefully be able to counter the threat they would face, but it never looked like working out, especially during a second 45 minutes that left him far from impressed, continuing: “We knew that and that’s kind of why we wanted to play the way we did because we knew that they were going to be aggressive and make it difficult for us to play the game we normally want. Also the game we normally want hasn’t been working, so we knew they were going to come and it felt like we did okay in the first half without actually executing what we spoke about.

"The few times we did have an opportunity or looked like threatening, was by getting behind them and that was through a clearance or something, rather than an actual passage of play or a move or a pass in behind. We still felt like that was the way to go forward and we spoke about more in the second half, but we never managed to get into the second half until probably right at the end when they're trying to hold on to the lead.”

While Luton have been in excellent run of results at home, unbeaten in 10 with six victories, their wretched form outside of Bedfordshire is seriously hampering any hopes the club have of breaking into the play-offs this term, now winless on the road since November, eight games in total, a stat that is clearly not good enough for a team who were plying their trade in the Premier League just two years ago. Asked just why he thinks there is such a polar opposite at Kenilworth Road and on their travels, Wilshere added: “At the minute it just feels like we lack a threat. It feels like we have to work really hard to try and get up the pitch and then when we do, we don’t really threaten the goal enough.

"Maybe it’s a belief thing, maybe it’s a confidence thing, there’s so many factors when you come away from home that go into it. But we’ve got some players that have played at a higher level than this that you would think in those moments that we have enough characters, enough leaders in there, in my opinion, to drag us through. That’s why we tried something different because we clearly want to play a certain way and we’ve been building to play a certain way and I think we’ve done that very well, especially at home, but away from home it’s not been working.

"We wanted to try something different where we had a bit of a different threat, a little bit more I wouldn’t say easier way to play, but it felt like if we can get into certain areas and put the ball behind them with the players that can attack that and we didn’t execute that well enough. We have to go back to the drawing board, starting on Saturday because it’s a home game, but it’s not going to be easy. Teams aren’t just going to turn up at this stage of the season and let you take points off them, everyone’s fighting for their lives and we have to be able to match that.”