Edwards had challenged his Luton players to pick up a result at Nottingham Forest
Town overcame a 2-0 deficit to grab a crucial point
Rob Edwards, the Luton manager, disclosed that he had issued a challenge to his team to ensure that they returned from their Saturday trip to the City Ground with a victory.
With only seven minutes remaining, Town was behind 2-0 and appeared unlikely to follow those instructions. However, a fantastic comeback was staged by Ross Barkley, Andros Townsend, and Elijah Adebayo, who came off the bench.
In stoppage time, Adebayo performed a fantastic job of controlling Tom Lockyer’s long ball on his chest, outmuscleing a Nottingham Forest defender, and then beating the charging Matt Turner to ensure the Hatters picked up a crucial point in their battle to stay up. Earlier, Chiedozie Ogbene scored a volley after Townsend’s free kick caused havoc in the area.
“We made our changes just before the second goal went in, so we’d thrown the dice,” Edwards stated in a post-match statement.
“I thought it had a really fantastic impact for the first minute or two, and then they scored the second goal.
They made some adjustments, but after that, we developed and gained momentum. After we scored our first goal, I genuinely believed that we could score another.
Before the game, I gave the players a challenge to do something, to obtain a result, because I felt that in our last two home games against Tottenham and Burnley, we should have achieved more, but we didn’t.
Therefore, it was about figuring out how to get a result, and I’m quite happy that the players succeeded in doing that.
After nine games of the season, Luton is still one point above the drop zone, with Burnley, Bournemouth, and Sheffield United all suffering losses.
Edwards went on to say that he is more than content with his situation, asking, “Where did everyone expect us to be?
I don’t think they thought top four, we’re where we probably expected to be and in the fight we probably expected to be in, so I’m comfortable with it.
“I had a lot of optimism before this game anyway and even if we’d have lost 2-0 I still would have had a lot of optimism.
What pleases me is we’ve got something from the game.,”
Although Town went into the break on level terms at 0-0, they were thankful to a great save from Thomas Kaminski, who kept out Harry Toffolo’s close range effort and a glaring miss by Ibrahim Sangare, who somehow slammed wide from eight yards out.
However, they then fell behind just three minutes into the second half, as Chris Wood found the net, missing another wonderful chance before adding a second on 74 minutes.
He saw his hat-trick goal ruled out for offside just moments after Luton had levelled the scores, as Edwards knew there was always a chance Town would need some fortune on their side when attempting to get a result at such a formidable venue.
He added: “There were things that we weren’t getting right (in the first half) and then started the second half in a really disappointing manner.
I don’t think the very beginning of the half was, but then to concede the goal was really frustrating for us.
“Two losses in 19 league games they’ve had here, that’s half a league season, it’s a whole league season of home games and only two losses, that was the size of the task.
It’s a really difficult place to come, Coops (Steve Cooper) has done a brilliant job, he really has and made this place a fortress.
“So we were always going to have to weather a little bit of a storm, but some of it was of our own doing.
“There’s areas we can learn from and be better no doubt about it, but we will, we’ll keep working hard on those things.
For us, if we’re going to get a result in a game, we’re going to need our keeper to make a save, going to need to ride our luck once or twice, going to need them to miss a chance.
“It’s going to be rare we’re going to dominate a game from start to finish and have a comfortable day at the office, I don’t think that’s going to happen in the Premier League.
“I was relatively pleased, 0-0 at half time, but we knew there was more from us and I thought from the moment we went 2-0 down, we really did show that.”
