Wilshere aware expectancy will be high when Luton take on bottom side Port Vale
Town go up against League One strugglers this afternoon
Hatters chief Jack Wilshere is well aware his side will have to deal with the added expectancy on their shoulders when welcoming basement side Port Vale to Kenilworth Road this afternoon.
The Valiants head to Bedfordshire sitting bottom of the League One table with 14 points from 18 matches so far, winning just three times, although two of those have been on the road. Sitting six points adrift of safety and having scored six goals from nine matches away from home, Darren Moore’s visitors haven’t won in the league since a 2-0 success at Barnsley on September 27, a run spanning eight fixtures, with three wins and five defeats in that time.
However, they have done well in the cups during that sequence, with two FA Cup successes and two Vertu Trophy victories, as they have actually won their last two matches, thrashing Barnsley 5-0 in the Trophy and knocking Bristol Rovers out of the FA Cup too courtesy of a 1-0 second round victory. Despite their recent triumphs, Luton supporters will head to the stadium today with the anticipation that the hosts will come out on top, Town the clear favourites with the bookies claim all three points too. Having that put to him, Wilshere said: “That’s something that we’re going to have to deal with and we have dealt with since I’ve been here bit and probably since when Blooms (Matt Bloomfield) was here before.
"We know that at times we’ve struggled against teams this season who are just in a block and we’ve worked on that quite a bit since I’ve been here as I quickly recognised that teams are going to try and do that to us. Port Vale, I know they’ve struggled a bit in the league, but they’ve won the last two in the cup, which sometimes can just change things a little bit. The players will probably have a little bit more confidence than they had, probably scored a few more goals then they have recently. We’ve looked at them in the last two games, looked at their league form and we’ll try and attack in the best way we think is possible and hopefully we can convert some chances.”
A look at the stats would suggest that the visitors aren’t as bad as the table shows, as they are 12th for xG (expected goals) in the division with 23.2, while they are joint third for big chances created with 43, although have scored just 11 goals, as they have missed the second most big chances with 33, also top of the accurate crosses per match with 5.9.
On what he expects from Port Vale, Wilshere continued: “It’s hard to predict as I’ve seen them press, I’ve seen them be in a low block. If we get our initial build-up right I think they’ll be forced to go into a block, so we need to pick our moments where we have a slow build-up, or we attack fast when they start to press us then we need to recognise those moments.
"I think we’ve got better at that. We need to make sure that if we are having a slow build-up that everyone understands it as a lot of the time as well, I don’t know where we are now, but when I first came we were 24th for transitions against, so that for me is not really a mentality thing, it’s more of an understanding and everyone being connected to, we’re going to play short here or we’re going to play long, as you can’t get caught in between both.
"If some players want to play short, we play over it and then we’re not in the positions to pick up second balls. It felt a little bit like that on Tuesday (1-1 draw against Leyton Orient), so we need to keep working on that and keep improving and we are. It will take some time to get that 100 percent right, it will happen at times, but we just need to be more consistent with it.
"Port Vale are a bit different to Rotherham (who Luton drew 0-0 with recently), they try and play, not necessarily in their own third, they’ll try and play a little bit longer, but then if they land on seconds they’ll try and play and try and create chances which they have done. So we need to make sure that when we’re attacking we’re doing it well and we’re trying to get behind them in the right spaces, but also when they have the ball that we’re focused and doing everything we can to stop them creating chances.”