Luton Town’s battle to escape the relegation zone continued on Saturday, with a tough trip to face Manchester City at the Etihad Stadium. The Hatters fell to a 5-1 defeat, with Rob Edwards reflecting post-match that the hosts ‘thoroughly deserved it.’
‘I know the scoreline suggests that they were the dominant team’ he explained in his post-match press conference. ‘Of course they were, they were better, they thoroughly deserved it, they were amazing, but we stayed in the game as long as we could.’
The Hatters fell behind after just 65 seconds on Saturday, when Erling Haaland’s wayward volley struck Daiki Hashioka and caught Thomas Kaminski off-guard. ‘We wanted to try and be aggressive and even in the first minute we tried, then [Erling] Haaland’s through one-on-one, the ball almost knocks Hashi out for the first goal, and we’re thinking, wow, there’s one of our few defenders on the floor knocked out and we’re one down after a minute, what a start that is.’
Embed from Getty Images‘It’s tough, but Hashi managed to battle on and I’m proud of the lads, they gave us everything. Today was never going to knock us or derail us, anything like that. I wiped it as soon as I walked into the changing room after the players. They’re disappointed, of course, no-one likes losing, no-one likes losing five-one, but let’s be realistic,’ he continued.
‘They’re a brilliant team, way ahead of us at the moment, and our back four consisted of one centre back, one full back and two wingers, it’s always going to be difficult against that level of opposition. Hopefully we get some bodies back, we’re going to need them and now we’ve got five games where we believe we can win. I’m not saying we’re going to, but we can get results.’