UPDATED: Town missing Shaw for Braintree encounter

Hatters target man Jon Shaw has been ruled out for tomorrow night’s crunch Blue Square Bet Premier clash at Braintree Town, writes Mark Wood.

Painkilling injections before the weekend’s 3-2 home defeat to Mansfield Town were not enough to get him fit in time for that encounter and he will not be fit to figure at Cressing Road.

Caretaker boss Alan Neilson said: “We’ve got a decent squad to choose from. There’s a few little niggles. Jon Shaw’s still not right so we still haven’t got him.

“It’s a slight hamstring. It’s not a bad one, just tight at the minute.

“But we’ll look at it, we’ll go attacking and take the game to them. We know it’ll be a tough game. Last Tuesday they beat the top league team, they beat Grimsby on their patch 2-0, so we know it’s going to be tough. We’ve got to be ready, we’ve got to be mentally strong and physically very strong to match them and hopefully our football will take the three points.”

Luton have unusually already named their team in-house for the encounter a day before the game and Neilson intimated they may be tempted to go for a 4-3-3 formation after it worked so much better than the 4-4-2 they started with against the Stags.

Neilson continued: “I think the second half showed that (it works) on Saturday. We started the game 4-4-2. We changed it at half time to 4-3-3 and I felt we looked more attacking.

“Dave Martin came off, a tactical substitution, and put Stuart Fleetwood on.

“If we go that way again we’ll go nice and strong up front. Pace, we’ve got Scott Rendell with a bit of height, and we’ll go attacking, we need to get the three points.

“I can see it being an open game, they are near the bottom and they need the three points as well. Hopefully it will be a good game.

“There won’t be massive changes. There will be a few changes.

“You saw how the game went. We went 4-4-2 and then 4-3-3 in the second half. So there will be changes form the starting line-up.

“We’ve told the players, so they know the situation they’re going into. The starting XI knew who they were and they can get their minds ready for tomorrow night.”

Town are travelling to the Iron with the rest of their fit players and they won’t name their bench until the evening of the game.

“We are taking a full squad there tomorrow night,” said Neilson. “We are taking a 20-man squad there tomorrow night, so we will select the subs when we get there.”

Neilson admitted it wasn’t ideal working with no knowledge of when a new boss is coming in, but by naming the side it should enable the players select to focus on the job in hand.

He said: “Tricky times. I said before, I just get on with my job and the staff get on with their job.

“We will organise the players, get them ready for tomorrow night.

“We’ve named the team in-house so the lads know that they are playing so they’ve got to get their minds right for tomorrow night. And we know it’s going to be a real tough game.”

However, Neilson admitted that Luton must defend better than they did at the weekend.

“We’ve spoken about it as a staff and spoken to some of the senior players,” he said.

“We’ve gone through the goals. Macca’s (Steve McNulty) came in, Wayne Thomas has gone in to see how we could have done better.

“They know there were mistakes and we’ll address it tomorrow night.”

And on the mood in the camp, he continued: “Of course they’re a little bit down after Saturday. We had a good chat after the game saying that it’s got to be better.

“We got done by a sucker punch there at the end, a little mistake by Macca. We looked at it and some of the players could have done better. A few mistakes have cost us at least a point.”

Town produced a much improved second half performance against the Stags and that showing can give Luton belief as they look to attack struggling Braintree from the start.

Neilson added: “We know we can (play well). I think first half for the first 20 minutes it was two teams cancelling each other out. The ball never really got down in the first half. All the three goals that we conceded were poor goals.

“We just have to say to the players, this is the formation we are going to go with.

“This is our approach to the game, if it’s playing football, or you look at their pitch because it’s quite a poor pitch there and they’ve had a lot of games called off.

“It’s heavy, it dries our quickly, it’s not the flattest, so we will go with a gameplan there tomorrow night and hopefully our gameplan will work well and it will be attacking football.”

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