Adebayo never had any doubts over 'confident' Town team-mate Taylor during Wembley shootout

​​Hatters striker Elijah Adebayo had absolutely no doubts in his mind that his fledgling team-mate Joe Taylor would score from the spot during Town's penalty shoot-out success over Coventry City in the Championship play-off final at Wembley last month.

The 20-year-old had come on for Adebayo at the half time interval in extra time, and thought he was the Luton hero when robbing Sky Blues defender Jonathan Panzo and going through to beat Ben Wilson with a few minutes left.

However, VAR got involved to rule the goal out for a clear handball in the build-up, meaning Taylor’s celebrations, plus those of his team-mates, boss Rob Edwards and near enough 40,000 Hatters fans were prematurely ended.

Then with spotkicks needed, and despite having never scored a professional goal before, the former Peterborough forward was second for Luton.

Despite playing in the Eastern Counties League Premier Division for Wroxham just a season ago, and being on the biggest stage and in front of the biggest crowd he had ever witnessed, Taylor showed nerves of steel to find the bottom corner, even though Wilson went the right way.

He stated afterwards that he hadn’t felt nervous, and that belief had clearly eked through to the rest of the squad, as Adebayo said: “I love JT.

"Since he’s been in, he’s had to bide his time, but he’s a confident boy if you speak to him.

"He said to me, weeks before the final, before we even knew we were going to the final, ‘a penalty in the play-off final, I want to take that.’

"He took his chance, he almost won it for us, but he gets to take his penalty and again, that goes back to the routine, the management, the staff.

"With him you could always see he was oozing confidence, I didn’t have any doubts, no doubts at all.”

Boss Edwards added: "The reason why he was so high up the order was that he was really, really good in the practise, so we had full confidence in him.

"He's a finisher, he showed a lot of composure and just the confidence that he's shown in the three weeks of practise.”