Hatters were without 11 players for new manager’s first game in charge
Luton boss Jack Wilshere declared he will look at putting certain things in place to try and improve the awful injury situation he has inherited from previous boss Matt Bloomfield, one that has affected the club since their days in the Premier League
With Rob Edwards going into the second half of the top flight campaign having to put two goalkeepers and a number of untested U18s on the bench when facing the likes of Arsenal, Manchester City and co, it was an issue that also affected his predecessor Bloomfield, who lost players such as Elijah Adebayo, Teden Mengi, Reece Burke, Jacob Brown and Shandon Baptiste for lengthy periods as the Hatters dropped back into League One.
The trio of Adebayo, Brown and Baptiste were just three of 11 first-teamers who weren’t available when Wilshere named his first match-day squad to take on Mansfield at the weekend, as the new boss was also without Nigel Lonwijk, Hakeem Odoffin, Reuell Walters, Liam Walsh, Izzy Jones, Shayden Morris, Ali Al-Hamadi and Joe Johnson too. As a player, Wilshere had his fair share of injuries that prevented him reaching the true level that his undoubted talent had, missing for large chunks of his career with groin, ankle, fibula and knee problems.
New Hatters boss Jack Wilshere - pic: David Horn / PRiME Media Imagesplaceholder image
New Hatters boss Jack Wilshere - pic: David Horn / PRiME Media Images
It means that although he knows full well some injuries just can’t be guarded against, having just arrived at Kenilworth Road, then asked if there are ways to prevent Town’s treatment room from constantly being full, he said: “I was a player who did everything right, lived right, felt like I was in a really good environment that had really good people, which I was.
"I kept getting injured so there are some things that are out of control, but there are some things we can do better in my opinion to help us keep the players fit. As you can try and do anything with a club, you can say we want to get back to the Championship and eventually back to the Premier League, but we need our best players available, so for sure it’s something we will look at.”
Asked just how he will go about doing that, the recently appointed first-time manager continued: “I think when you have a lot of players that are injured, there’s always conversations and things that happen in the environment. What was important for me was to try and understand what’s been happening, how we’ve been training, what the numbers look like and to be honest I’m still understanding that.
"Also when you do come in and try and change something like that you have to be very careful to do it slowly. You can’t start training at 100 miles an hour for three hours long, there’s ways of doing it. What I will say is the staff here, Michael (Amoah), who’s head of performance, he came in four or five weeks ago and then the manager gets sacked, so he’s probably been thinking ‘oh’, but he’s been outstanding and all the staff have.
"They’ve all been open, I think the best way of answering that is we have to sit down, we have to be together and we have to understand what we’re doing now and what style we want to be able to deliver. Then there’s things that we can do to get there, so those things do take time, but we have to do it together."
One player who neither Wilshere or Bloomfield have got to see yet is summer signing Odoffin, who required surgery on an unexpected non-musculoskeletal issue, which was flagged up in his medical prior to arriving at Kenilworth Road. Asked how the ex-Rotherham United player’s recovery was going, the boss said: “Hakeem was modified when I came, he was with the team a little bit and then stepped out.
"The last few days he’s been more with the team again. He’s someone we have to be patient with, but I’m excited by him as he’s been really good in training and I think he’ll help the group with his presence and his leadership skills, but also a good player. So we’re slowly getting players back which will help, but we also have to be a bit patient with them.”
With the likes of ex-Middlesbrough Jones getting closer to featuring for the first time this campaign having suffered a stress fracture to his back in pre-season, with Al-Hamadi not too far away either, then when looking at Town’s sidelined list, it did give Wilshere some cause for excitement about a day when the majority of them are fit and available. He added: “It’s hard that as when you’re the coach and your focus is on games and trying to win games you focus a lot on what you’ve got and how you can make the best out of that.
"Then of course when a player comes in who’s not been fit for a while and he’s good and he’s helping the group, it’s very tempting to go ‘come on, let’s go and let’s push.’ I’m confident with the group of players that we’ve got that we’ve got enough to get something out of the game tomorrow (against Northampton) but it would also be nice to have some of the experienced players back.”
Continue Reading