Luton Town 1 - West Bromwich Albion 1

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Ratings submitted so far: 13

Brendan Clegg:

Another game and another draw that in isolation isn’t a bad result… but you feel the pressure mounting a bit and Corberan has to find a win from somewhere.

No surprises in the back 4 but Wallace getting the nod was probably about protection.

Luton played fast and direct on us on the first half and whilst we fought and defended we were just woeful on the ball.

The only good thing about the first half was we scored… Maja converting a nothing chance superbly with a back heel. What it told me most was that here is a player who has proven he will get onto things in the box if you put it in there early and our seeming obsession with working the perfect opening yields less than we would if we just ended quick attacks with crosses.

There were periods in the 2nd half where we did better, and we really couldn’t have been worse, but we conceded a cheap goal through 4 errors.

Mowatt makes a bad pass, Furlong dives in when he should read he’s not getting there, Holgate HAS TO aggressively close the ball once it’s near our box and Palmer should do better across his body from that range… almost identical to the Armstrong goal in the playoffs. We really should have come away with a bit of a flukey 1-0 win.

From there with the subs and seesaw style of game we could have won or lost it, so holding on seemed a bonus.

Personally I thought Cole did enough to show he’s worth a go instead of an extra midfielder in the right circumstances. We know he’s not spectacular but he ran about and the overhead kick was a great effort from nothing.

We’re still right on the margins. Marginally good enough to challenge for the top two with a fully fit squad (we no longer have), and the difference between top 6 challengers and mid table is probably the extra Dike injury and getting 1 or our 3 other centre backs fit. Conclusion? I can’t see anything other than tin hats needed for a difficult couple of months where we’ve just got to try and stay near the top 6.

• Palmer - 6 over hit too many kicks and felt he could have saved their goal but overall okay
• Furlong - 6 Mostly defended well
• Holgate - 6 Battled under pressure but gave it away so cheaply and needed to do more for their goal.
• Heggem - 8 A warrior who put his head and feet on everything. Not always controlled or good on the ball but we needed him and he delivered.
• Styles - 5 at times near and tidy but also vulnerable and put it out of play a lot
• Mowatt - 6 scrapped away, it was a bad pass but there were other failures
• Racic - 6 I’m still waiting for more tbh, so-so
• Wallace - 5 Ran and battled but nothing of note.
• Grady - 5 Barely impacted the game
• Grant - 7 Just through effort, fight, directness he gave us a bit of hope. Incredible to think he’s one you look to in the trenches but fair play to him.
• Maja - 6 he’s a real player, great goal from no service

• Cole - 6 just being in the box and running about was something different
• Fellows - 5 Struggled again I thought. What’s happened? Just needs to go back to being very direct.
• Johnston, Molumby, Swift - 5 tough for them to impact but they all tried

Kev Buckley:

Absolutely awful game to watch, more so when you consider that we were in the play-offs last season, and the home side had been in the top-flight.

Lost of changes at the back where, Heggem, a centre-back being played at left-back finally got a start in the middle, with Styles and Holgate being asked to do left-back and centre-back roles respectively.

In behind Maja, Corberan stuck with Diangana on the right, and preferred Grant on the left, with Wallace through the middle. Given all the recent injuries there was bit of scare early doors, as Racic went down, but he did return to play.

The scene was set for a lot of hoofed clearances and misplaced passes, as early as the fifth minute, after Palmer, denied the opportunity to restart with a short ball from a goal-kick hit one long and central, only to have to race outside the box as Luton played the ball into acres of space behind our defenders who had pushed up to halfway.

Luton certainly looked the better side in the first ten, not that the looking better bar was all that high, but had few if any real chances to show for it.

As twenty minutes passed, Racic coughed the ball up leading to a shot from the left of out box that only needed the most basic of saves from Palmer but, two minutes later, he was forced into a more demanding save as a shot was curled from the right, and only parried it to an attacker just outside the far post: that attacker failing to get the final shot of the action on target.

Maja's sublime flick, after Grant had but the ball into the danger area, made outside the left post and ending up in the right side netting, was completely out of character with the rest of the half, and indeed, bar the equaliser, the rest of the game. It did however highlight what could happen if we get the ball into the box, having got in behind, more often

Mowatt's passing was shy of his best "keep the game moving" linkup work and the ball, aimed at Furlong was woefully short of pace, but still required Cheong to collect it in his stride, drive forwards into the left side of our box as Holgate back-peddled, and then fire across the front of Palmer and into the far side. Another gem of a goal so out of character with the rest of the match.

The substitutions started around the hour mark, Fellows replacing Diangana on the right, and Cole replacing Wallace through the middle. Racic gave way to give Molumby a run with fifteen to go, accompanied by Johnston replacing Maja, a change which saw Cole move up to lead the line, and eventually, Grant made way for Swift so that we ended the game with Johnston, Swift and Fellows behind Cole, in place of Grant, Wallace and Diangana, behind Maja.

In between the last two swaps, Palmer would have to react quickly to push away a Cheong shot that went through Furlong's legs, two yards in front of our keeper, after the full-back completely failed to make contact, whilst just after the last change, Cole's overhead attempt at least required a decent save from the home keeper.

Tempting to say that without regulars Ajayi and Bartley, our ball retention/recycling patterns across the backline were disrupted but, in all honesty, we created very little because of overhit passes in the midfield, and some awful kicking (I'd be flattering him to call it distribution) by Palmer on the day, when, in other games of late, whilst we haven't been creating all that much either, at least we've kept the ball.

Diangana on the right effectively removes that side of the field as an avenue for getting the ball into Maja, and surely Fellows, or Wallace, both right wingers of course, have to start there, Come to that, both Fellows and Johnston, stand out wide players on their respective sides last season, currently look incapable of affecting the game in the little time they're getting from the bench. Maybe they both need regular starts to build back their confidence?

For me, even though we scored first, this was very much a point gained from a very poor performance, rather than two dropped.