How did the first season with Luton Town finish?

What a season! It literally was ups and downs. The season started really well, then we went on a 16 game winless streak over the Christmas period. This drove me to despair as I could not understand how to turn the team around. We have evolve over the season and developed three different tactics. The first was too technical and we changed early, the second was inconsistent and ended with a counter 442.

It really was a crazy season, and we will have an inquest into the season in this blog. If you are interested to find out more, keep reading.

January Transfer Window

I decided that the Luton Town team was not good enough. We needed some new blood, we had £23m to spend and I decided to strengthen each area of the team. This will be problem further down the line as the team is huge, as there have been a lot of players bought in the summer, a few by me, the original squad from last year and also a number of players returning from big injuries.

So what did we do:

Jesse Lingard – Free Transfer – Proven at PL level, I wanted someone with a bit of class and experience in the team. Also I wanted some depth in the AML or potentially a starter. I wanted to improve our chances in front of goal as the current team were wasting a lot of chances. Would have been a good signing if it wasn’t for all the injuries.

Evann Guessand – £5.5m Nice – I wanted a new striker who was young had good fitness stats, but this one totally backfired. Only scored one goal in the back end of the season and was not a great performer. I will give him a season to prepare and settle, but i will not rely on him.

Tom Cairney – £2.7m Fulham – I needed a player in the centre of the field which was more attack minded as well as having first touch, off the ball and passing stats. He was on the transfer list too, meaning he was cheaper. He was an excellent squad member, coming off the bench to support Barkley and sometimes starting.

Ruan – £2.6m Sassuolo – A favourite of mine, from the Serie A days. He isn’t a high potential player, but he has good solid stats in defence and will become a good part of the team once he settles.

Takeaways

Looking at the table, we were lucky. Although we were confirmed to be safe on game 36/37, if we weren’t and Everton weren’t docked points we would have gone down. None of that happened and we did stay up, so it doesn’t really matter.

Now on observations, I can see that we conceded 66 goals and finished on a goal difference of -20. We need to address this next year, through fortifying the defence by looking at the weak performers and the star rating according to the coaches and then replacing them with better quality defenders.

If we concede 10 less goals, that equates to an extra two wins by studies by analysts on the top 6 leagues. Achieving this extra two wins would propel us up to 13th. The way in which we are going to do that is to look at our defence. So we have a low block, deep line meaning that pace will not beat us, but crosses could be a problem. This means that we need DCs who are big in the air.

Next steps for Luton Town

In terms of recruitment for Luton Town, we have a number of options available. We will look at the lowest performers in the team, followed by the lowest current ability stars. We need to eliminate the weaknesses. Again looking at links to the tactic, so tall defenders which will head the ball back out of danger.

When looking at the data hub, we can look at our weak data and recruit the players which are better in those categories to increase our ability. There are plenty of options out there, due to the low budget of £30m we just need to create our own stress test before buying these targets.

Before you start on your journey with Luton Town, make sure to leave a quick comment to let me know what you think of ‘How did the first season with Luton Town finish?’.