Town boss: Players need to show they want promotion

Luton slumped to a desperately disappointing defeat at Wrexham last night, which saw them fall 15 points behind their second-placed opponents.

Brabin admitted a few frank words had been spoken in the dressing room after the full time whistle, and was glad to hear the players were hurting after such a poor showing.

He said: “That’s a pleasing part for me, something that I don’t think we’ve really done in the past.

“There’s a lot disappointment there and I’ve asked them do they want to get promotion?

“Because looking at that first half performance, it didn’t look like we wanted to. It was more a case of we were hoping to get get promoted, so we need to kick on from that.

“All I can say is watch this space and hopefully we’ll see a reaction off the back of that performance.”

The manner in Town’s first half capitulation was a major concern to 167 Town fans in attendance, those supporters watching on Premier Sports TV, and also the manager himself.

He continued: “It was a worry, it was a concern. Maybe I’m gaining comfort from the fact our preparations haven’t been ideal.

“We changed things in the morning, it’s easy to hide behind that, but it is alarming when you’re looking at experienced players who are making errors which we work on every day, we speak about every day.

“Hopefully we can get that out of our system at just the right time and we need to kick on again as that was far, far below what is expected of us and certainly not good enough to be getting promoted.”

Brabin admitted afterwards that his side’s preparations had been thrown into disarray with the withdrawal of striker Stuart Fleetwood from the squad due to an ankle injury.

The boss said: “We had a game plan which we’ve had to change with an injury to Stuart Fleetwood, so we’ve had to change all our preparations in the morning which is not ideal.

“We ended up going with what we thought was our most experienced players in there and it wasn’t good enough.

“I’m disappointed with the preparation before the game, but it couldn’t be helped with an injury. We should be bigger and better than that and I can’t legislate for the errors we made.”

A host of individual mistakes cost Town dear in the first half as they gifted Wrexham the two deciding goals.

On the first, Brabin said: “It was a poor defensive header out, it’s come to the lad Pogba who is facing us. Greg (Taylor) should be getting tighter, he knows that what we do, day in day out, he should be getting tighter to his man.

“He hasn’t, he’s been allowed to turn and then we expect Alex Lawless to be covering, that’s what we work on.

“He’s never got across, the fellas got a cross in and the Wrexham forward wanted it more than us and got his header in.”

With the second, the boss continued: “Janos (Kovacs) tried a back header which he knows we don’t try that in dangerous areas like that.

“He’s misplaced it, they’ve nearly scored from it and the second has come as a result of their corner.

“Andre was first to the ball, he knows we don’t take chances in the box and he’s tried to pass it in the box and they’ve punished it.”

With Brabin admitting for the first time that Hatters title chances are now extinguished, he didn’t feel that he was any extra pressure with Town’s second successive away loss.

He added: “It’s out of our hands what they’re (top two) doing, we’ve just got to concentrate on ourselves, but it’s looking inevitable that we’re going to be in the play-offs.

“We’ve just got to make sure we cement that and not put any more performances in like that from now until the end of the season.

“There’s always going to be pressure on me, the job your in, there’s pressure on every manager.

“That’s something that you learn to live with and I don’t feel pressure apart from pressure from within.

“When I make decisions, I’ll live by those decisions and even though our preparation was hampered in the morning, I won’t be hiding behind that.”

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