Wilshere agrees Luton were 'too slow' but felt they should have beaten Boro

Hatters boss Jack Wilshere agreed with some Luton supporters that his side were ‘too slow’in possession at times during their 2-1 defeat at Stevenage last Thursday night, but still stuck to his opinion that the Hatters did more than enough to win the contest.

The near enough 1,400 travelling fans were left ultimately frustrated once more on their trip to Hertfordshire, as for the second season running witnessed a defeat, having been beaten 2-0 in what was Matt Bloomfield’s final game in charge last term, stretching their winless run at the SPORTA Arena to over 12 years now.

The visitors had the lion's share of possession, just over 70 percent in total, completing 608 passes to Boro’s 255, but despite that stat, only managed two shots on target all match, one in the opening minute through Gideon Kodua and then Mads Andersen’s fortunate deflection on Kasey Palmer’s effort that beat the wrong-footed Tommy Setford to halve the deficit in the closing stages.

It left several aggrieved Hatters fans disappointed by what they felt was the sideways and backwards nature of Luton’s attempts to get something from the contest, particularly after the break, as defenders George Johnston (132), Mads Andersen (113) and Hakeem Odoffin (71) had 316 touches off the ball between them in total, making their feelings known during a frustrating second period and at the final whistle as well.

However, Wilshere, who had to watch over an hour from the dressing room having been sent off by referee Andrew Humphries for his reaction to the hosts’ controversial opening goal, thought his side carried out the majority of their instructions in the right way, and were deserving of all three points, saying: “I don’t think it’s the same as the last time, I don’t think it’s the same game. There’s certain things we wanted out of the game.

"Were we too slow at times? Yes, however, I use the analogy to the players before the game, I’m a dad of four and sometimes when I go home and I walk in the house, it’s absolute chaos. My kids are climbing on tables, they’re throwing things, the dinner’s everywhere, and the best way that I go in and deal with that is by being calm, taking control of the situation. We knew what we had to do in the game, I don’t think it’s right to compare it to the last game because there were so many different things in the game.

"We had a lot more passes last Thursday and passes for us is not success. We don’t sit in here with the players and say, ‘well done lads, we had 500 passes or whatever passes it was.’ We want control, we want possession, but we want it with a purpose. I think about the Leyton Orient game. We had maybe 300 and something passes, but we had 25 shots at goal, so that’s success for us. We have to do what the game wants at times and try and impose our strengths on the game and I thought we did that.

"The idea of passing it around the back is to open up games to play through, or they become slightly more aggressive and you can play over it. They weren’t aggressive with their press which meant that we had a lot more stable possession, probably than we thought. We knew that we were going to and we were going to try and attack in that way, but did we miss a few opportunities where we could play through them, yes, I agree with that.

"When we did play through them and we did arrive in wide areas, we didn’t have the quality in the final third, we didn’t attack the box with the right positions and the right areas to attack. Ultimately, what we need is the delivery and the quality coming into the box, so some really, really good things in the game that we need to carry on with and move forward with, but also some frustrating things that we spoke to the players about and we worked on this week.

"We’re always reflecting, reviewing, first of all, what we do as coaches and how we deliver that message to the players, but then how the players put that message on the pitch. It was a game in my opinion that we did enough to win it. Could we have been better in the final third? Yes, there’s no doubt about that, we arrived there a lot, without the outcome we wanted, but in terms of everything we wanted from the players, Stevenage try and create chaos and we asked the players to try and manage that, win that battle, win that fight and earn the right to put the ball down.

"We did that in terms of the fight, in terms of outworking them, then we put the ball down, could we have been more progressive at times? Yes, but it has to be the right time because otherwise you turn the game into basketball and that suits them. We want to be more progressive, but we also want to attack against teams like that with stable possession. There was loads that we took from the game, of course we’re really frustrated as we thought we did enough to win the game, we limited them and their threat to really low xG (expected goal) against, which is credit to the players as that’s not an easy thing to do and they stood up to that fight.

One thing that particularly infuriated those in the away end was the way in which after Andersen made it 2-1, then bar a Kasey Palmer head that flew over the bar, Town didn’t ever come close to threatening a second goal, as they suffered a second successive defeat on the road, following their 5-2 reverse at Mansfield Town previously.

Jeers rang out when lively striker Callum Marshall, the only player who looked remotely like scoring, was withdrawn on 66 minutes for top scorer Nahki Wells, as the travelling faithful wanted to see the Northern Ireland international left on, and Town go with two upfront instead of just the one. Asked if he will ever opt for two forwards at the same times, Wilshere added: “Yes, definitely. I think that’s quite a nice partnership and something we look at in training all the time.

"You have to do it against the right opposition and the right structure. The idea of the formation we played was to try and get five players on their last line, that was the idea. If we then change that and put two up top, because of the profile if the players we’ve got, we’d probably have to take away one of the players from the last line, so it’s not always when you’re chasing. Sometimes it can be when you’re holding on to a game, you can put two up top as it gives you more stability throughout the team.

"If you’re in a 4-4-2, for example, but that is definitely something. We tried it from the start of games last year, we tried it from the bench a few times and now we have two different profiles that complement each other really, so that is probably something we will see, but it has to be against the right opposition. We made a few changes and tried to attack in a different way.

"Ultimately, we weren’t good enough in that period of the game, and I think naturally there is a feel that when you’re chasing a game that you want to have more impetus and more threat, but probably from a players perspective, from a coaches and coaching perspective, were we disappointed with the last 15 minutes, yes we were, as we felt the spaces were there. We arrived, but without creating a clear-cut opportunity.”