Simon Grayson: Lost Luton Town need to regain identity

By Simon Grayson – Former Blackpool, Leeds United and Preston North End manager

When I took over as manager of Sunderland in 2017, they had just been relegated from the Premier League.

Though I’d left by then, they would end up going straight down to League One.

Could Luton Town be about to do the same thing?

Possibly – but I think the reasons behind their struggles are very different.

BATTLING IT OUT: Luton’s Elijah Adebayo, right, in action in last week’s goalless draw against Middlesbrough and, inset, Hatters boss Matt Bloomfield
PICTURE: George Dunn

Problem

At Sunderland, there were a lot of issues behind the scenes.

Without going into specifics, that was the biggest problem.

Luton aren’t like that at all.

The Hatters are a well-run club with a CEO in Gary Sweet who is very experienced and very knowledgeable about the game.

Their problem – in my opinion – has been one of adjusting back to the Championship.

When they were coming up through the EFL, they played quite direct, quite aggressive, going after second balls and generally being horrible to play against.

And especially when they went into the Premier League, they made sure that the players up there knew they’d been in a game, purely down to the work-rate, the desire, the physical side of things and set-pieces.

Mentality Change

That was Luton’s trademark.

But since they’ve come down, it’s like there’s been a mentality change – almost as if they had to start behaving like an ex-Premier League club by playing football on the floor and trying to be exciting and expansive rather than pragmatic.

That’s not a criticism of the former manager Rob Edwards, or Matt Bloomfield who left Wycombe to take over at Kenilworth Road in January.

It’s just an honest take on what I see looking from the outside – a team who got caught somewhere between doing what they were good at and trying to play a different style of football and ended up doing neither one thing nor the other.

Confidence

Why? You can look at recruitment.

Did they bring in the right players to get out of the Championship or did they have one eye on the Premier League?

You can look at the players, too.

Sometimes people get promoted and, mentally, start thinking they’re Premier League players when really they’re only EFL players.

Either way, if you’re trying to play good football when you haven’t got the personnel to do it then you are always going to be in trouble.

Then you get bad results, confidence starts to crumble and that’s when things really start to snowball.

When you’re flying with confidence, when you know that you’re going to get results week in and week out, nobody even thinks about how good they are.

Doubting

You feel untouchable.

That’s what’s been embedded at Luton all this time on their amazing run to the Premier League.

But when you’re losing games and nothing’s working, those exact same players will now be doubting themselves, doubting their ability and playing safe because they’re worried about making mistakes.

It never ceases to amaze me what a massive impact confidence has on the way a team or an individual plays.

It can be your biggest weapon or your worst enemy.

Unfortunately for Luton, it’s the latter right now but you’ve always got to remember what an incredible overachievement last season was.

Objectively, I think the Hatters are a bottom-half Championship club so this season isn’t quite the catastrophe it seems.

What I’d also say is that they are far from dead and buried.

In the Championship, it doesn’t take long to close a four-point gap.

If they can beat the teams around them – Hull City, Derby County, Stoke City – then I think they survive.

If they don’t, it’ll be very tough.