Everyone loves an underdog
Luton Town are back in the big time! The last time they were in the top league was back in 1955 and it wasn’t even called the Premier League at that point.
Welcome back! This is the follow on guide to the ‘Day One Series’ where we managed each team in the Premier League. You can find the Luton Town guide here to bring you up to speed on how we set up the team. With this guide we will go up to the January mid point and report back how it is going.
Luton are the underdogs of the league and have media prediction of 20th. This basically means that there is no chance that they will stay in the division. If there is anything that motivates me, it is when someone tells me I cannot achieve something. It is right that Luton have limited ability, limited resources, a small stadium and a small reputation, but this just means that we have something to work for.
In this guide we are going to:
- Look at the league performance and individual performances.
- We will look at the tactics which have been used.
- Potential transfers and areas of improvement.
Read on if you are interested in taking the underdog to new heights!
Luton Town Results
In this section we will review the results from the season so far. This will give us an idea of the sort of teams that we are winning or losing against. That will be a good indicator of how we are doing for the season, and potentially we can predict how many points that we need.
The season started off really well, beating Liverpool, drawing with Newcastle and beating a rival in Forest. We then went on a run in September too beating Brighton, Crystal Palace and drawing with Bournemouth. Losing against Villa is no big deal, we weren’t meant to beat anyway. At this point I am happy that we have claimed points from teams that we shouldn’t have.
October and November were not good. We played three big teams in Chelsea, Man City and Tottenham which was a hard run and we lost. November contained two losses to Everton and Brentford, but the good news is we beat Sheff Utd which are one of our relegation rivals. In December we also claimed two major victories from Burnley and Fulham, again two relegation rivals.
This is great as it is distancing us from the relegation zone and putting the problem in another team’s court. We are on the other moving into the mid table positions and looking to push on. Despite the losses I’m really happy with the progress the team and the table does not lie.
In terms of the league table, we are doing brilliantly, let’s use the data to understand it more. We basically go for the win every game, we have 8 wins and 10 loses from 20 games, there is no in between. Unfortunately, we have a negative goal difference, but that comes with the territory when you have lost more than you’ve won.
Individual Performance
In this section we will look at the individual performance of the players in the team. When you are a consultant you will identify problems in general and then look to drill down on the root cause of the problem. By looking at the small problems it changes the outcome, this is straight line theory in a nut shell.
On first impressions, not one player has played an average rating of a 7 or over. I find this incredibly hard to fathom as we are over performing on our expectations. This indicates that we maybe riding our luck, we getting the results but not playing well. We need to look into this even more, let’s look at some key performance indicators.
Looking at the expected goals, most of the team are over performing which is great to see. Ogbene, Chong, Nakamba and Burke are under performing. Looking at passing we set a benchmark of 15% mistakes, so anyone under 85% is struggling. Ogbene, Barkley, Woodrow, Giles and Chong are all at fault here.
Luton Town Tactics
In this section, we will look at the tactic I have been using so far this season. We will look at the reasons for the tactic and how it is meant to work. I will start with the team tactic and then follow up with the player roles.
The team tactics are based on hassling the ball in the opponents half. We are not good enough to play an all out possession game, so we need to press the opponents into doing it for us. We are currently playing it out from the back to the midfield to build play, this is something will may have to forego. The plan is to get the ball wide and get it into Adebayo to head it in, a basic plan.
Looking at the individual roles, we have a basic solid back four. The anchorman is there to protect the backline and recycle the ball to the midfielders. I’m still undecided with the two creative roles, it will be a support and attacking role, but which ones. The wingers are there to get the ball into the box for the target man.
Conclusion
Luton have had a very successful spell this season for me. They are mid table and I think they maybe capable of more, the main weaknesses I can see are Ogbene and Chong, they aren’t contributing enough to the goals of the passing play.
We can also see that it’s a big mistake for this team to be playing a quick tempo and from the backline, it is conflicting for a lower ability club. Also rather than playing it through the centre backs, we should be playing it down the wings or the full backs. This will mean we can get our attack going and removal some of the risk playing from the back.
Go and try your luck with Luton today! If you are enjoying this guide, then please give us a like and comment on it. Follow us on Facebook or Twitter.
