Wilshere insists Luton have 'improved defensively' despite poor record

Hatters boss Jack Wilshere has insisted that his team have definitely improved at the back this season despite having one of the worst defensive records in League One so far.​

In their last third tier match before the international break, Town were beaten 1-0 by Bradford City at Kenilworth Road, breached when an unmarked Bobby Pointon was able to reach a deep cross from the right-hand side and place his header beyond recalled keeper James Shea, who took over from an out of form Josh Keeley, for what proved to be the deciding factor in the contest.

Having also lost 2-1 at Stevenage nine days beforehand, it was the 14th goal that Luton have conceded so far in just seven games, eight more than at the same stage under previous manager Matt Bloomfield last term, having kept just one clean sheet, unlike the four they had managed at this point when Bloomfield was in charge, a stat that means they are third worst side for goals conceded in the league, behind just Bromley (18) and Wycombe Wanderers (16).

This has been done with Town making a concerted effort to bolster their back-line in the summer as well, snapping up George Johnston from promotion-winning Bolton Wanderers, as he has been a regular in the XI along with the fully fit Hakeem Odoffin. A look at the xGA (expected goals against) table, shows that Wilshere does have a point, as in reality Town are second highest behind Bradford City, meaning they should have only been picking the ball out of their net on seven occasions, giving them four extra points and putting them on the cusp of the play-offs, which is something the Luton boss referenced when making his assessment.

He said: “Reviewing it with the coaches, and this is what I showed the players, as much as we’re frustrated, which we are, there’s no way we can’t get anything from those two games with the domination we had, the creation, especially against Bradford, that we felt we had in the first half. If we’re serious in this league, we need to change it, but when you actually then look at some things across the whole season, our defensive numbers, that’s an important message because I spoke to George Johnston about this.

“Since he’s come in, we have improved defensively. We’ve conceded a lot of goals and if you look at the, and I know xG is not everything, but if you look at the xG conceded table, we’re doing really well. We’re doing some really good things defensively and are difficult to beat, so we’re looking at that. We’re trying to highlight to the players their strengths that we’re doing.

"We need to improve attacking, especially more threat in the second half, definitely, but we’re also doing some good things. We need to keep going with that with the players, as that was always the way last year, we’d review it, we’d take emotion out of it and that’s really important. We need points from those two games there’s no denying that, but we believe if we continue that way and then improve in certain areas, we will.”

Town still have well over a week to go before their next league game, a trip to Wycombe Wanderers, but asked whether having six first team players away on international duty, Emilio Lawrence, Callum Marshall, Jamie Donley, Nahki Wells, Kasey Palmer and Izzy Jones will be a hindrance to the kind of work Wilshere and his coaching staff want to put in on the training ground to seek an upturn in results at Adams Park, Luton having lost three of their last five third tier outings, he added: “Yes and no because we’ve also got some other things and players that we have left also need to improve a lot of things as well.

"If we improve as a team then when individuals come back, hopefully they can add to that. What is quite nice is when they get back, we’ve got a game Saturday and then we’ve got another full week (until MK Dons away), so we’ll use this time. We know what we want to go after. There’s a little bit around last week that we want to touch on as well, but then we can really sit down as coaches and plan what we see and try and deliver some really good sessions that can help the players.

"We know it's not like that where you just do one or two sessions, you have to build it, but we have been doing that since pre-season. So we just need to tweak a few things and the player here, of course there are players away that we need to train with, but when they’re back we’ve got some stuff planned for them as well.”