Wilshere apologises to travelling Hatters fans after unacceptable Stags debacle
Town manager reacts to Mansfield thrashing
Luton boss Jack Wilshere apologised to the club’s travelling supporters after his side turned in a performance that he deemed was totally unacceptable when being hammered 5-2 at Mansfield Town this afternoon.
The Hatters went into the game having gained a huge amount of praise for their efforts in only going down to a 2-0 reverse at Premier League side Chelsea in the Carabao Cup a few days earlier, but having conceded just once in an hour to the likes of Morgan Rogers, Cole Palmer and Danny Welbeck, found themselves picking the ball out of their own net an embarrassing five times inside 57 minutes at the One Call Stadium.
Three of them came in the first half, while Wilshere then made three changes at the break, hauling off Kal Naismith, Emilio Lawrence who struggled again, and Izzy Jones, but it didn’t lead to any kind of improvement, Luton shipping two more in quick succession. Nahki Wells scored twice in the closing stages to bring a glimmer of respectability to the scoreline, as with plenty of the almost 1,500 away supporters still in their seats at the end, Wilshere, who was seeing his side beaten in the league for the first time since March, held his hands up when going over to applaud them at the full-time whistle.
He then used his post-match press conference to apologise further, quick to downplay the effects of having to go again so soon after their trip to Stamford Bridge, saying: “We can’t use that as an excuse. We knew what we were coming into here, and we weren’t there, we weren’t there in the first half and it's been a while since we’ve lost a game. I said the other day about ways to lose and what we can accept, and we’re not going to win every game, but we can’t accept that, not if we have ambition.
"I’d like to apologise to the fans as their anger should be at me, that’s fine. They’ve supported us a lot and we’ve built a really big connection with them. We lost on Thursday, I don’t care if it’s against Chelsea, that’s still the right way to lose, when you’re trying, you’re fighting and we didn’t show that today, so it’s hard to accept.”
With Mansfield barely having to work for their goals, all coming from players left unmarked to shoot past a totally exposed Josh Keeley, Wilshere was left mystified at why his players had been so bad at competing for their individual duels, as he continued: “I didn’t recognise that, I’ve never seen that, I don’t think I’ve ever seen that. Maybe the energy from Thursday was taken out of us, maybe bringing players in that don’t really understand us, don’t know us, starting the game, maybe, that’s on me, and we can’t accept it.
"You can accept bad performances as we’re not always going to be able to play our best or be as dominant as we want to be, but then you have to be really good at the other side of the game and weren’t today. You get punished when you let an opposition like this get on top of you and run into your box, that’s tough, but amazing support from the fans. That’s on me, I apologise, we’ll be back Wednesday (against Stockport).”
After the exertions from midweek, Wilshere made five changes for the contest, giving Spurs loanee Jamie Donley an immediate debut having signed on a season-long loan yesterday. He was taken off in the second half after a difficult debut, not quite on the same wavelength as Kasey Palmer in particular, or the rest of his team-mates.
On his selection of Donley, and a line-up that looked to attack their hosts, Wilshere added: “It’s tough for him to come into that, that fight. We play games like this and we’ve matched the fight, we’ve won the right and then we’ve earned the right to have the ball. We never did that, we never earned the right to have the ball, we never had momentum. We were still trying to play and find spaces that weren’t there.
"I think it’s difficult for him to come into that, he’ll learn a lot from it, but it could have been anyone who was brought off at half time. There’s games where we’ve gone about it in a certain way and just because we play attacking players doesn’t mean we don’t have to win the fight and win duels. This league demands that and we didn’t do that and that hurts. I always look in my mirror first and that’s why I’ve apologised to the fans. Every week, even when we win, there’s some decisions I don’t get right and there will be definitely some today.”