Town are beaten by Premier League side Chelsea this evening
Hatters boss Jack Wilshere had nothing but pride with his side’s performance despite going out of the Carabao Cup with a 2-0 defeat at Premier League Chelsea this afternoon.
Jack Wilshere applauds the Luton supporters at Stamford Bridge this evening - pic: David Horn / PRiME Media Imagesplaceholder image
Jack Wilshere applauds the Luton supporters at Stamford Bridge this evening - pic: David Horn / PRiME Media Images
The Hatters dug in quite brilliantly to frustrate their hosts in the first period, the overworked back-line denying both big money summer signing Morgan Rogers and England international Cole Palmer on numerous occasions, while when they were breached, keeper Josh Keeley did superbly to keep the scores level at half time, with a number of flying saves.
Although the second period saw Danny Welbeck break the deadlock early on, and centre half Hakeem Odoffin deflect the impressive Estevao’s low shot into his own net with 12 minutes left, the manner in which Town kept their big-spending opponents out for the majority of the contest, left Wilshere to say: “The first thing is, we don't like losing, and I felt that in the dressing room, but my message to the players is be really proud. A lot of teams in the Premier League will come here and try and do what we've done, frustrate them, stop them from playing through us, kill the spaces that they're good in.
"I thought we did that really well in the first half. We put a lot of energy into that, we could have been better at times with the ball and picked our moments, whether to attack fast, which there was space to do, or to keep the ball to try and take a little bit of control, because we're good at that. You saw the players in the second half do that and do that well, but ultimately really proud of the players for competing the way they did. I was saying to them, we can come up with a plan of how we want to do it, but they have to execute and I thought they did that really well.”