Wilshere urges Luton to close the gap on League One play-off places

Luton boss Jack Wilshere has urged his side to finally embark on the winning run which will ensure they reach their end goal of promotion this season.

The Hatters had picked up back-to-back wins over the Christmas period, defeating both Wycombe Wanderers and Leyton Orient on home soil, only to see that sequence of results ended with a disappointing display at Exeter City on New Year’s Day, beaten 1-0 by the hosts. The defeat saw Town remain eighth in the table, but drop to four points adrift of Bolton Wanderers, Huddersfield Town and Stockport County, who with 39 points each, all sit above the dotted line in fourth, fifth and sixth spot.

Automatic promotion seems something of a pipedream, with leaders Cardiff City now 16 points in front of Wilshere’s men, while even Lincoln in second, who travel to Kenilworth Road next weekend, are 13 better off. A victory for Town this afternoon against fellow play-off rivals Stevenage would definitely see the Hatters climb up a place to seventh, leapfrogging their opponents in the process, who will still have two games in hand afterwards, while they would cut the gap to Bolton to a single point as the Trotters’ trip to Peterborough United is postponed, also able to make ground on both Stockport and Huddersfield, who go up against each other at Edgeley Park.

Having wasted previous opportunities to break into the top six, it’s something that with 22 games of the season to go, Wilshere knows his side can’t keep doing, as he said: “No we don’t (want a gap to open up) and that’s probably why Exeter hurt as well as we felt like we were closing that gap and we were getting close. Since I've been here, every time we've threatened to push into the play-offs, we’ve either drawn a game at home or we’ve lost away to Exeter and we want to change that. We want to get closer to the play-offs, we want to get in the play-offs and we want to go on a run where we can pick up points and close that gap and eventually get in them.”

To do that, Luton will need to produce a far better attacking display than they did against the Grecians, where despite dominating possession with over 60 percent of the ball during the 90 minutes, failed to have a single shot on target in Devon, as the visitors not only scored once themselves, but also hit the woodwork and forced James Shea into a number of decent saves too.

At home it’s been a different story of late, with seven goals in two matches, but the final third output was something Wilshere has gone through with his players once more in the week in a bid to improve their goalscoring threat against their Hertfordshire opponents, adding: “We reviewed it (Exeter loss) and showed the players. A lot of the time when we’re in build-up and it changes game to game, but in that game in particular, we wanted to arrive in the final third with stable possession and whether that took one, two, three passes or we played straight through them and we did that, we did that consistently.

"Then when we got to the final third it was either a bad decision or a technical error, we showed the players it and that’s been the focus this week. We showed the players some things, gave them some ideas and the big thing for us is our decision to attack or to keep the ball, so it’s something we’re working on. I think that is one of the hardest things to work on and it probably takes the longest to start to understand the positions we want the players in, so we’ve given them a little bit more solutions, but then they have to go through that process of making good decisions, making bad decisions.

"We have to consistently work on that as teams will come and they will be in a low block. They faced that even before I was here, so we will always look at that and try to find ways to improve. Even when we do that and teams start to work us out, we’ll have to change again and keep going through that process, so the more variation in attack the better to keep the opposition guessing and keep them under pressure.”