Wilshere happy Town's hard work is paying off as Luton's set-piece prowess downs Grecians

Luton boss Jack Wilshere was happy to see his side’s hard work on the training ground is paying off handsomely after the Hatters bagged yet another three goals from set-pieces during their 3-2 victory over Exeter City at Kenilworth Road last night.

With 13 minutes on the clock, Town were up and running when Liam Walsh’s excellent corner from the left hand side was perfectly delivered for Kasey Palmer to glance a downward header into the net to score for a third successive game. The Grecians then levelled through Reece Cole’s clinical finish, before Luton went straight back up the other end to move 2-1 in front when Jack Aitchison was adjudged to have handballed in the area by referee Alex Chilowicz, despite appearing to have been shoved by Devante Cole, Jordan Clark rolling his penalty into the net.

It was then 3-1 to the hosts on the stroke of half time, George Saville the architect this time, as he curled in a magnificent free kick for Hakeem Odoffin to prod home from a few yards out and score his first goal for the club. It means that following both goals coming from corners against Wycombe on Saturday, Walsh and Saville the providers once more in Buckinghamshire, then seven from Town’s last 10 matches are now from deadball situations, as Saville and Walsh were on target themselves from corners against Reading and Northampton.

It is no real surprise to Wilshere, who said: "You can talk about set-pieces and set up and get your timing and your block right, but if you don’t get the delivery right then you haven’t got the chance to score and that’s really important. I think Walshy, Savs are probably our two best at taking set-pieces. I’ve said this before and the players know this, I pick the team on that as well, as it’s a really important part of the game that we’ve worked on so much and I’m happy that we’re seeing some output from it.

“Credit to the players as we work on it a lot. There were some frustrations earlier in the season that we weren’t quite getting there, or we weren’t quite getting the detail of the block right, so credit to the players, but also credit to Pilks (Kevin Pilkington, goalkeeper coach), as he’s the guy that studies the opposition. He’s the guy who comes up with where we’re going to put the ball, how we’re going to attack it and he’s relentless with it. So I’m really happy for the players, but happy for Pilks as well because he puts a lot of effort into it.

“We worked on it all season, we have different ways of working on it. We obviously work the day before a game on specific stuff around the opposition, but we train it in the week as well. We have set-piece games, we have rewards for set-pieces and I think it’s so important. You see it across every level of the game and I’m really happy as when you do put a lot of work in and there were some frustrations earlier on in the season where we weren’t quite getting the delivery right or we were and we didn’t block the goalie and he came and caught it, so everything has to fall into place and then the delivery is really important and we got that right.”

With Wilshere having spoken earlier in the campaign about rewards for clean sheets, it appears that is now the case for set-pieces too, but asked if he could reveal what they actually were, he opted to stay quiet once more, continuing: “No, I can’t, I can’t say.”

Although the first half was all about set-plays for the Hatters, once Exeter, who looked the better side for large parts of the opening 45 minutes half, made it 3-2 at the start of the second period, then it was Town who regained the ascendancy, going close from open play to adding to their tally, Clark hitting the bar, with Kal Naismith going close twice as well.

Wilshere added: “We started okay and then we maybe allowed them to come into the game. They play some nice stuff, they’re a good team, they’re obviously down the league a little bit, but they play some good football. They make it difficult for you, they drag you all over the place, we couldn't quite get to grips with that in the first half, but set-pieces were important again.

“I thought we scored at really good times too. We showed a lot of purpose when we did decide to attack. It wasn’t always easy to take the ball as they kept the ball a lot, but when we got the ball I thought we attacked with purpose, variation as we spoke about before. Sometimes we went behind them, sometimes we went through them, I think we can do better in the second half when we win the ball back high to pick the right pass and really make that opportunity, but I thought we scored at the right times and attacked with purpose.

“That was the message at half time, we changed a few things, gave the players a little bit more clarity and asked them to be a little bit more aggressive, which I thought we were in the second half. They hit us on the counter at the start, but I thought apart from that, if any team was going to score it was probably us. We contained their build-up play, our high press was excellent, we won a lot of duels, we won a lot of aerial duels, and then as the game goes on it gets a little bit nervy, but I thought we saw it out really well and happy with the result."