Luton boss Rob Edwards was left hugely frustrated with his side’s lack of a clinical edge during this afternoon’s 1-0 defeat at Preston North End, as he felt Town did more than enough to have won the game themselves.
The Hatters mustered 17 shots at goal in total at Deepdale, but only four of them on target, Carlton Morris’s header flipped over the top by home keeper Freddie Woodman in the first half, with Jordan Clark and Elijah Adebayo both testing the North End stopper in the second period. They also saw six wayward attempts, Alfie Doughty putting the best opportunity over from inside the area late on, with the Lilywhites, under new manager Paul Heckingbottom, defending superbly, making seven blocks in total.
Preston themselves had just two shots on goal, both coming in the first half, the latter one seeing Will Keane beating James Shea to score what proved to be the winner, as speaking to the press afterwards, Edwards, whose side have now taken just one point from their opening three games, said: “It is really frustrating now to be standing here having lost that game.
“I think both halves there were some really good opportunities and we weren’t clinical enough in the final third. We got into really good positions and maybe the final pass wasn’t right, the final slide ball, or just the finish where we missed the target. We had 17 shots overall and that could have been more and should have been more, but only four on target.
“I would put that down to some wasteful moments, but also some really good defending from Preston as well. They put some brilliant blocks in and they kept us out, so people don’t want to hear it when it’s a really good performance and we come away with nothing. There’ll be one or two frustrated, but I have to look at what we’re doing right and we have to look at the areas that we have to be better in. Today it’s pretty clear that we created enough to score more than one and take at least a point from the game, and it should have been more.”
After the positives from last week’s stalemate achieved when playing for an hour with 10 men at Portsmouth, Edwards was once more left happy with the overall display against Preston, as he continued: “Last week we came away nil-nil, but came away with a good feeling. We created chances, especially when we had 11 men and then showed a different side to ourselves with 10.
“Today I thought it was a good performance. They’ve got a new manager coming in and the crowd are obviously behind them, but I thought we controlled the majority of the game. Their threats came from counter-attacking moments which we know are going to be a big area for other teams this season. The performance was there, the chances were there, there was a lot of good stuff, but we want results and people will demand results.”
Having scored in 18 successive Premier League games last season, and finding the net against every top flight team over the course of the 38 matches, on whether Town need to put extra work in at the Brache to brush up their finishing, Edwards added: “We do a lot of work on that every day on the training ground, so sometimes that just doesn’t go for you. There’s times throughout a season for every team where it just doesn’t quite go their way. I’m hoping it’s that at the moment as if we continue to create and get into good areas then the goals will come, I’m pretty sure of that.”
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