Phil Sumbler
When your goalkeeper is the man of the match in a home game you know, as a football manager, that you are likely to receive a negative reaction from your supporters and that was certainly the case yesterday for Rob Edwards.
A little over eighteen months ago he was the toast of the Bedfordshire town as he led the Hatters back to the Premier League but instant relegation followed by a less than satisfactory return to the Championship has heaped the pressure on the manager with many fans already calling for his head with Luton just two points above the relegation places.
It is certainly not inconceivable that when the return fixture arrives in just three weeks time he may not be in the visiting dugout such is the pressure on him.
The boos were audible at Kenilworth Road at the end of the game ad Edwards wasn’t critical of those who were expressing themselves in that way although he did admit after the game that he was not concerned by things that he could not control.
Despite the Swans dominating most of the game, Luton took the lead in the first half when Adebayo squeezed the ball home from a tight angle but that was cancelled out by a well worked second half set piece that saw Matt Grimes execute a Swansea equaliser.
Had it not been for Thomas Kaminski in the home goal it could have been much worse for Luton and Edwards but ultimately the game ended with the spoils shared something that you suspect Edwards was more grateful for than Luke Williams would have been.
Speaking after the game the Hatters boss said “It’s never nice to hear, but I understand it. Supporters just want to support the club and want the club to do well and win, perform well and win. So, yes, I’m not concerned by it because in the end, I can’t affect that. And I’m learning to try and make sure that my head space is taken up with things that I can affect, not the external stuff.
“It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see, at the moment we’re not playing great. Supporters want the team to play well and win. Unfortunately in this game if you’re not winning consistently, then they’re going to voice that. It doesn’t matter what we’ve done before and what we’ve all achieved together before, it doesn’t matter. You can see the disappointment and the anger and the frustration. It’s not nice to hear, of course it’s not, but it’s got to make us work even harder.
“It was really difficult conditions and hard to get any kind of rhythm in the game. Lots of basic mistakes but we found ourselves one-nil up and okay, fairly solid, were able to chat through a few things at half time and then second half I thought we began okay, similar kind of rhythm.
“They’re going to try and take the ball but they weren’t hurting us too much. We weren’t able to capitalise on one or two half moments, chances, set-pieces that we had, they always retained a threat and I think they deserved the equaliser. It’s frustrating from us as someone got their positioning wrong from a corner and allowed that, but if you can’t win it, don’t lose it. We got something from the game when clearly we weren’t at our best. You can see no-one is performing at their best so it was tough, a really, really difficult day.”
