Brabin’s anger with defeat

A wet and windy night made for dreadful conditions, but the disappointed Town boss refused to make excuses as his team failed to produce the goods on the night.

He said: “I’m very, very, very disappointed.

“I’ve said to the lads we should be coming away from here disappointed not only with the performance and at worst a 0-0.

“Coming in I’m disappointed not to have done enough to have won the game.

“But then to concede the goal and lose the game, I can’t put into words how I feel.

“I’m still feeling very angry. I’ve glanced over to the supporters that have travelled all the way up here as well and I feel sorry for them having come to witness that.

“We knew it was going to be a tough game, the conditions don’t help.

“They are very direct, put us under a lot of pressure but we’ve got to be big enough to cope with that.

“I just don’t think we did enough to take the game to them.

“I said once they won the toss I knew the wind would be stronger second half and we had to take advantage of that first half and I don’t think we did.

“We played at a tempo which is well below what we expect.

“And, like I said, second half the wind has got up.

“They are very direct and that’s the way they play and we’ve got to be better to cope with that and we haven’t.”

It was a similar story to the game at Southport last month, where the Hatters again failed to make the most of the conditions when they were in their favour in the first half, as they drew 3-3.

Brabin continued: “I don’t want to us excuses, but both this game and the Southport game the wind built up really strong.

“Certainly the Southport game we couldn’t get out of our box and that was almost the case here.

“Like I said we’ve got to have a little bit more about us to cope with that, that’s why I’m disappointed because we haven’t.”

Not even tweaking the formation in the second half helped as Brabin continued: “We knew Barrow would play five in midfield and we knew the way they play.

“In the second half it was more of a 4-4-2. Just to get Fleets (Stuart Fleetwood) a bit more central and it never worked.”

On what he said to the players after the final whistle and where the Hatters go from here – with the top two of Fleetwood and Wrexham both winning – Brabin added: “I think everyone took it on the chin.

“I told everyone what I thought, we said a lot of it at half time. It’s easy to find excuses and I don’t want to hide behind excuses. I told them what I thought in my anger and we’ve got to move on.

“We’ve just got to get back to basics and certainly improve from this performance.

“We are always playing catch-up, we certainly won’t be giving up. We know we’ve made it even harder now with the disappointing, not only performance, but result.

“But we’ve just got to keep going. We’ve got to find that form, we’ve got to get stronger.

“We’ve certainly got to be better than that if we’ve got any aspirations of getting promoted.”

For all the latest Luton Town FC news, reports, stats, player profiles, live match updates, prediction table and a complete fixture list, visit our Hatters Microsite.