Hatters boss Jack Wilshere declared that on-loan Manchester City winger Emilio Lawrence remains fully in contention for a place in the Town XI that takes to the field against Bradford City this afternoon.
The 20-year-old moved back to Kenilworth Road from the Etihad in the summer, signing a season-long loan deal, with big things expected following a campaign in which he starred, having joined in January, scoring twice and adding six assists too. That impressive return did follow a spell on the bench after Lawrence struggled initially to make the step up to League One football when put straight into the first team by Wilshere, and it might well be that has to happen once more this year.
Having joined, the Scotland U21 international was once more thrust immediately into the side at Reading, beginning the next three matches with Notts County, Chelsea and Mansfield Town, but when failing to impress in any of those fixtures, was dropped from the match-day squad for the last three matches, including the 2-1 defeat at Stevenage last Thursday night.
Hatters attacker Emilio Lawrence - pic: Duncan Jack / PRiME Media Imagesplaceholder image
Hatters attacker Emilio Lawrence - pic: Duncan Jack / PRiME Media Images
With Luton now back in action when hosting the Bantams today, asked about the chances of Lawrence being involved once more, Wilshere said: “Emilio is working hard. Emilio understood my decision, I had a conversation with him, a good conversation and he understood what he had to do.
"What probably will help him is that he had experience of it last year, and he knows what he needs to do, but we need to remember and I need to make it clear that Emilio was brought here because of his quality, because of how he can help us, because of how he helped us at the end of last season, in nearly reaching what we wanted to reach. He was really influential to that and that was the reason we brought him back.
"Emilio knows that and he knows how much I love him and the quality he has, but he also knows that this is League One and there are some things you have to do before you get the opportunity to show that side of your game. So Emilio has understood that, he’s working hard, he’s looked sharp in training over the last few days, and he was always in contention. At times last season when he was out and then he came back, he played as a left wingback and I don’t necessarily thing that’s his best position, so he needs to continue working hard, but he’s always been in contention.”
Town will definitely need all their attacking threats operating at their best when going up against a Bradford side who are the joint best defensive side in the league this term, conceding just four times and also earning four clean sheets from their first six games too. On taking on a side managed by former Luton defender Graham Alexander, and finished in the play-offs last term, Wilshere added: “We look at their strengths, we look at where we think we can hurt them.
"They’re a really good team, a really consistent team, a really experienced manager that I have loads of respect for as a player. I think he played close to one thousand games which is incredible and he’s got a lot of experience as a manager now, so he knows this league, he knows the game, he knows how to win games, he knows how he wants his team to look. But as always, our focus is on trying to find weaknesses in them, and trying to expose spaces in them to try and attack them and be on the front foot, but it will be a tough game.
"They’ve got good players. (Bobby) Pointon, I really like him, technical, finds spaces, (Josh) Neufville, on the right, he was dangerous last year, we looked at him last year, he’ll be dangerous again. They recruited a number nine (Jake Beesley) from Burton whose an aerial threat and a handful, so it’s always the same process for us, where first of all we look at them as a team and their strengths and then how do we stop them, how we do deny them space and how do we exploit what we see as a weakness.
"Then we start to look at individuals and start to talk to our individuals about possible ways of stopping them or dealing with them, and we’ll do that, but we have to make sure we compete as this team’s really good at competing. They make it difficult for you, they run, they fight, they tackle and we need to do the same.”