Neilson urges Town to take a step closer to Wembley with a win at York

HATTERS assistant boss Alan Neilson has urged his side to take an early advantage in their quest to reach two Wembley finals as their potential saga with York begins in earnest tomorrow, writes Mike Simmonds.

Town travel to Bootham Crescent for their FA Trophy semi-final first leg test, before hosting the Minstermen in the second leg next weekend and in the league a fortnight later.

With both sides likely to be amongst the play-off mix too, there is every chance they could meet six times before the end of the campaign.

Hatters were destroyed 3-0 earlier in the season, but Neilson wants them to approach the match positively to take an advantage into the Kenilworth Road tie.

He said: “Let’s go and win. We approach it as we do every game. We go and try and win it.

“Of course, if you’re in the last 20 minutes, you’re winning 1-0 you might go defensive, or it’s 0-0, you might sit back a little bit, as it’s only half of the game.

“In your playing career as a professional footballer or as a manager or coach, getting to Wembley is huge.

“If we can get to Wembley twice in the space of eight days and win both of them it would be absolutely superb, but it’s a game at time.

“The gaffer and Cards (Paul Carden) went up to watch them in the week and both sides are not having the best of results as they would like.

“It’s a game that both sides can go into and be a little bit more relaxed if you can with the atmosphere and tension that come with a semi-final.

“We’ll go there and try and win and hopefully the second leg next week too.”

Bootham Crescent has been a far from hunting ground for Town in recent seasons as this year’s match saw them not only lose convincingly, but Alex Lawless broke his hand after hitting the dressing room wall during the interval.

Luton were beaten 1-0 last season, while suffering a 1-0 defeat in the play-offs the year before too, where they drew 0-0 in the league campaign.

Town haven’t actually scored at York in over 10 years since Carl Griffiths and Ian Hillier netted in the 2-1 win back on September 15, 2001.

Speaking about the Lawless incident, Neilson said: “When you go back to an old club you really want to do well and I think Alex was really upset as we know at half time.

“He came in and had a little accident, it happened, we were losing 3-0 and he takes it to heart, as all the players and staff do.

“Look at the games we’ve played with them the last couple of years. We lost in the play-offs, beat them 5-0 at our place and then they beat us 3-0 and that was our worst performance of the season by a long way, we didn’t play well at all.

“We’ll travel up today, have a rest in the hotel. We’ll have a meeting tonight to get the players geed up, tell them the facts and details about how we want to approach the game and what we want to do, go and win the game.”

Luton don’t enter the game in any great form on their travels too, having lost successive away matches, to Barrow 1-0 and then 2-0 to Wrexham on Tuesday night.

The defeat in Wales led to a number of suggestions from fans that manager Gray Brabin didn’t know his best team, with some also questioning whether he should remain in charge, but Neilson denied the staff were feeling under any extra pressure.

He continued: “We need to come back from a poor result on Wednesday night and kick on.

“We know there’s pressure being at Luton Town, we should be first or second, which we’re not and there’s a bit of distance between us and the top two.

“I don’t look at the websites, or read what’s happened. We know there is pressure here to get results.

“But as a managing staff and coaching staff, we just look to get the lads sorted out and organised for the next game.”

With former Hatters striker Jason Walker ruled out of the match due to injury, Luton have their worries too, as Craig McAllister, Andre Boucaud and Godfrey Poku are suspended, while Dean Beckwith, Dan Walker, Dan Gleeson, James Dance and Amari Morgan-Smith are all injured too and John Paul Kissock is suspended after his red card at Wrexham.

Neilson said: “Kissock’s suspension starts, while Stuart Fleetwood has got a little tweak in his calf which we’ll assess later today.

“Dan Walker is getting close, Dean Beckwith is getting close, Dan Gleeson is just waiting for the go ahead from the specialist with his injury, but we’re talking weeks more then days with them.

“We’ll see who’s playing well in training, see who’s flying, which lads are having a little bit of a lull.

“We have to look at it and play the best players who are playing well get the shirts and if they win the matches they keep the shirts.”

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