Wilshere happy to get back to action after 'amazing' international break
Luton manager grateful for the chance to work with his players
Luton boss Jack Wilshere described it as ‘amazing’ to finally get the opportunity to get some proper work with his players on the training ground during the recent international break.
With the Hatters’ last game on Saturday, March 21 against Stockport County, a contest that finished all square at 1-1, the majority of the Hatters squad remained at the Brache during the fortnight, allowing Wilshere to have one of the lengthiest periods of time to get to work with them since taking over in October. Asked just how it’s been, Wilshere said: “Amazing, I’ve loved it, honestly I’ve loved it. It’s who we want to be, how I want the team to think, how I want the players to think about improving, about how every day matters.
"How I love to work is you train one day and then you review it. We haven’t really had the opportunity to do that and that is a big part of improving. We used the time well, after the game on Saturday against Stockport, we gave the players Sunday, Monday, and then we trained Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, so we had a good block there.
"We worked on different things, on both parts of the game, defending which I feel like we need to get back to being really, really good at, especially when defending deep. There was a stage of the season where we were number one for clean sheets and we have to get back to that and the only way we can do that is training and showing the players that. We used it well, then we gave them the weekend off and then we got back to work on Monday, as I’m a big believer that they need to spend time with their family and give their energy to their family.
"They can in their own way inspire you to come back and work even harder, so we tried to get the balance right. I don’t know if we’ll know if we got the balance right until tomorrow, but I’ve really enjoyed it and I hope the players have really enjoyed it as well. I think it probably came at a good time and it was important we got the balance right of giving the players time to recover, but also using it to try and develop still as a team as I feel like we have to do that.
"That was my message to the players, enjoy your time with the family, but when we’re here, we’re going to work. We haven't really had a block of training in the last (few months), maybe Cardiff was the last one game week we had before that. We haven’t had one in a while and I’m a big believer that training is there to improve so we’ve enjoyed the time off but also had some really good work.”