Money believes U’s shot themselves in the foot in Hatters draw

Former Hatters boss Richard Money believes his current Cambridge United side should have put one over his old club at the Abbey Stadium on Saturday, but that they shot themselves in the foot in the 2-2 draw, writes Mark Wood.
Cambridge United v Luton Town. wk 14.Cambridge United v Luton Town. wk 14.
Cambridge United v Luton Town. wk 14.

He said: “I thought we deserved to win. I thought we carried more threat, I thought we deserved to win and we shot ourselves in the foot, that’s the top and bottom of it. We came off the pitch 2-0 and everybody’s talking about the right scoreline, I don’t think they’ve created anything we didn’t give them.

“I think we’ve given a lot of teams a lot of problems in recent weeks and it really is about trying to be a little bit more secure and stable at those vital moments. At the minute we just can’t seem to do it.”

But he had no real qualms with the penalty awarded against on-loan Charlton keeper Nicholas Pope who came charging to the edge of the area and took out Andre Gray on 64 minutes, which allowed Solomon Taiwo to level the scores from the spot with his first goal for the Hatters.

“It’s one of them 50-50s and I’ve just had a word with Nick there,” said Money. “It’s the hardest thing for a young keeper when you come and play proper games, league games.

“That ball over the top, when and when not to come and probably he’d have been better off not coming all the way.

“But, listen, what we did before then please tell me about it to get to that situation. Where on the planet can anyone defend like that? It’s what it is, we’ve got to keep going and I want to finish the season strongly from here and then take stock at the end of the season and rebuild, that’s really where we’re at and there’s a lot happening in front which is good.”

Big U’s forward Tom Elliott and a number of his team-mates caused Luton plenty of problems on the day after Money had targeted Town’s weaknesses.

He said: “We had a close look at what they’ve got at the back and we tried to give them what they don’t like and I thought we did it pretty well.

“I think it showed signs of progress when you are disappointed to have come off 2-2 against a team of Luton’s capability.

“I thought we deserved to win and we didn’t win, because I thought we shot ourselves in the foot. I’m not going to say it’s the story of the season, but I should say it’s the story of the season and it came and bit us in the backside again.

“I thought we were much the better team, carried much more threat but we’ve given them two goals again through mistakes and it’s difficult to legislate for that on the touchline other than just keep putting people in the same situations and hopefully they deal with it better next time.

“I was really pleased with the effort, it must have been a good game to watch I’d think, but disappointed to come off 2-2 because I thought we deserved to win.”

Cambridge’s Josh Coulson had had to be stretchered off on the stroke of half time after getting caught by Gray’s high boot, and Money added: “He’s got a deep cut and we’re not sure whether he was concussed or not, I don’t think so. But it’s not a good situation I don’t think, so I don’t think we’ll have him on Monday that’s for sure.”

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