Wilshere respects O's point but felt Luton did enough to win
Town held at home by Leyton Orient
Luton boss Jack Wilshere felt his side should respect the point they picked up against Leyton Orient in a 1-1 draw at Kenilworth Road this afternoon, even though he thought the hosts did more than enough to take all three.
The stats would back up Wilshere’s claims as well, Town having 23 shots in total throughout the game, with seven on target, the visitors firing back with just nine, although three of them were directed at Josh Keeley’s goal. A fine start by the Hatters, Nahki Wells having two opportunities blocked, saw Luton eventually take the lead on 25 minutes, ex-Orient loanee Jamie Donley firing home from the excellent Gideon Kodua’s pass t to open his account for the club.
Wells then scuffed another chance straight at Nathan Baxter, as the O’s made it 1-1 in style, Jaze Kabia rifling into the top corner on 36 minutes. Hatters went close again, Hakeem Odoffin hitting the post and Kodua’s follow-up brilliantly blocked, as the second period saw Wells fail to beat Baxter, while Kodua curled wide and substitute Callum Marshall put a late free kick into the wall.
Speaking afterwards, Wilshere said: “I think we learned last year to respect a point, but probably today, when we reflect on the game, I thought we did enough to win the game. We created enough chances, I’m happy with the performance, yes, we could have been more consistent with it in the second half, taken more control in the final third, but everything we asked of the players they did, they got success with doing it, they didn’t get bored of doing it.
“Clearly I think new players, they have to understand a little bit more of how we want to play, need to understand each other, their team-mates, need to build those connections, so overall we should have won the game, but performance-wise happy and we’ve got work to do.
"Consistency in this league is what we’re chasing, it’s probably what a lot of managers will be saying over the next couple of weeks. We want to win that game, I feel like we did enough to win that game and the players feel like that, but even at the end when we were tired and they were building a little bit of momentum, putting balls in our box, it was important we saw that out and we walk away with a point.”
Although disappointed to only score once, and see Luton’s run of 11 games in the league when netting two or more goals ended, top-scorer Wells spurning a hat-trick of opportunities, Wilshere continued: “We’ve been doing that, we’ve been putting our chances away this season. It was a focus in pre-season from a coaching point of view, what type of sessions we put on, but also from a recruitment point of view.
"We brought in Marshy, and sometimes when you do that, bring in another number nine, it makes the current number nine step up and Nahki’s definitely done that. They both scored the other night, I’m really happy with that, I just think when you reflect on the game, there’ll be opportunities that we should have probably taken and on another day we do.”
Having taken the lead, Wilshere was then annoyed with the manner in which his side were breached, neither Izzy Jones or Odoffin dealing with the ball on the right, before Andersen failed to cut out a long pass forward, allowing Kabia to nip in and then cut inside to fire past Keeley. He said: “They’re the moments that we have to value so much in this league where you think that, okay, if we don’t get on to this ball it will be fine, they’re in our half.
“You know against teams like this they’re going to put the ball behind you, and it turns into a fight and it can happen that you lose that duel, so we’ll be disappointed with that, but even after that, I thought we created enough chances to win the game.”
Although Town began strongly after the break, during the closing stages, it was Orient who looked like they might nick victory on the counter, and on another day they might have, meaning Wilshere valued the final result, adding: “We allowed them to turn it into the game they wanted.
"It’s easy for me to say that they’re tired and you’re trying to put pressure on the ball and they keep putting it in the channel and you try and clear the danger, it lands to them or it lands to us and we don’t quite clean that or manage that moment That then builds momentum for them, they try and delay, and we probably could have managed that moment better bit, so that’s where the tiredness came out.”