Wilshere thought Town 'went up a level' during Dons triumph

Luton boss Jack Wilshere was left hugely impressed with the way his side ‘went up a level’ during their utterly dominant 3-0 victory at AFC Wimbledon this afternoon.

To say the Hatters bossed their opponents at Plough Lane would be something of an understatement, as they finished with 62 percent possession, managing 24 shots, with nine on target, the Dons not testing Josh Keeley once, also managing 42 touches in the hosts’ box, with AFC having just 11 at the other end.

Town finally made the most of their superiority as well, the superb Kasey Palmer opening the scoring on 12 minutes when firing into the top corner, while Ali Al-Hamadi made it 2-0 on the hour mark, netting his first goal for the club, Jake Richards completing the scoring late on with his second in successive games.

Asked whether it was Luton’s best performance since he took over in October, Wilshere said: “I think the most consistent. We’ve had spells before in games where we’ve threatened to do that. I spoke to you guys and the players before that I felt like a really good performance, consistent performance, we get two or three goals and win comfortably is coming, and that happened today.

"We’ve set the standard now. The players have shown they can do it consistently, doing the simple things really well, competing, landing on seconds. We spoke at half time, we said that’s the only way I think we’ll allow them back into this game, if we don’t compete, if we don’t land on second balls. They threatened a little bit in the first half, but we went up a level in the second half and I’m really happy with the players.”

To be fair to the Dons, they lost three players to injury, which meant they played the last 10 minutes with 10 men, but despite going into the game on the back of five games without a win, Wilshere hadn’t been taking them lightly, especially given his own side’s away form for the majority of his reign, adding: “Preparing for this game I was watching them and I like a lot of the things that they do.

"They’re a well organised team, they make it difficult, they compete, they play long balls and probably the last six games, the results haven’t been what they wanted them to, but I watched, especially the Stockport game (3-0 loss) and they could have easily won that game. They’re a good team that take beating and especially away from home we’ve struggled against teams like that. I think about Wigan, Huddersfield, Plymouth as well, it’s been disappointing, so you saw a team that took the lessons from them.

"Of course we had to change momentum away from home and I felt like we did that at Wycombe with not a great performance, but finding a way to win the game and today was a really good performance and winning the game comfortably. A lot of hard work goes into that, it’s not just that we turn up and the players think that we can just keep the ball and dominate the ball. We have to land on seconds, win your duels and then consistently keep the ball which is not easy. So I’m really proud of the players for that.”