Luton Town 1 Leeds United 1

We came very close to snatching a win from this game at Luton Town, but generally it was another poor performance.

Dennis Wise made two changes after last weeks debacle at home to Doncaster. One was enforced, due to Kilkenny’s suspension, with Hughes moving back into the middle and Prutton restored to the right of midfield, the other seeing Kandol coming back into the starting line-up and Flo dropped to the bench. I thought these changes gave us a stronger looking side, with a centre forward who can actually move and Hughes playing in his more natural position.

But all we saw was another disjointed Leeds performance, with far too many moves breaking down as passes went astray. Maybe the problem is that the transfer window system has forced us to bring in all the new players at once and they are taking their time to get used to each other, but we will have to improve on this showing pretty soon.

The opening stages of the game were very scrappy and neither side created an outstanding chance before Leeds took the lead from a set piece in the 27^th. minute. Sweeney swung a free-kick into the area and the Luton defence failed to track Huntington, leaving him the space to pick his spot and head past Brill.

This goal should have given us the confidence to go on and kill the game off, but we allowed Luton to force us back into defence for long periods. In the second half we did have two good chances on the break to secure the points, but our once-deadly strike duo were both guilty of wasteful finishing. First Beckford went round the keeper but could only shoot wide, then Kandol fired over when he was through against the keeper.

At the other end our former player Matt Spring had a shot deflected wide, but we started to think that we were going to hold out for the win. Luton’s last chance seemed to have gone when Furlong headed wide as the game moved into injury time, but it was all snatched away from us in the fourth minute of injury time. Parkin got his head to a left-wing cross and placed the ball beyond Casper.

It always a shattering disappointment when we don’t win a game when we’ve been ahead for so long, but in truth Luton deserved a point for their share of the play over the 94 minutes. Earlier in the season we won plenty of games with goals in the last few minutes, and they say it all evens itself out in the course of a season. We can only hope that Wise and Bassett can inspire the lads to a much better performance at Southend on Tuesday night.

Photo: Action Images

Southampton Polls