Cornick believes Luton can try and emulate Barnsley's success and reach the play-offs next season

Hatters winger feels Hatters deserve to be a top 10 side this term
Town attacker Harry CornickTown attacker Harry Cornick
Town attacker Harry Cornick

Town attacker Harry Cornick believes the Hatters should attempt to emulate the efforts of Championship surprise package Barnsley next season.

Like Luton, the Tykes only stayed up on the final day of the campaign last term, needing a stoppage time goal to win 2-1 at Brentford and avoid the drop.

This time, the Oakwell club have secured a play-off place against the odds and are now in with a real shout of reaching the Premier League, in a final four shoot-out with Brentford, Swansea and Bournemouth.

Town have enjoyed an excellent season themselves, with a top half finish assured, but Cornick insists they can look even higher next year.

He said: “We’ll see who we bring in, what sort of team we have, and how we start playing at the start of the season.

“But you look at a team like Barnsley, they’ve stayed up on the last day last year and they’ve gone on to reach the play-offs.

“Who knows, they could go up this year, so looking at what Barnsley have done, I don’t see why Luton Town can’t do something similar.

“Personally I’m rooting for Barnsley to go up, I want the underdog to go up.

“I think they’ve been brilliant.

“When they came to us they were brilliant, they’re such a good side now that people don’t look at it and go ‘Barnsley, they’re just going to scrape it, they might stay up they might not’, they deserve to be where they are.

“We’ve got to look at that and say why can’t we do that next season?”

Luton had been one of the teams tipped for the drop again this term, but Cornick felt that even though Town have done far better than anyone else believed they would, the pre-season predictions hadn't matched the ambition within Kenilworth Road.

He continued: “I think we’ve outperformed other people’s expectations of us.

“We always hear people say ‘teams like Luton’ and it makes me laugh as I don’t think we’re somewhere we shouldn’t be.

“I don’t come out of any game thinking ‘they were miles better than us, we don’t deserve to be where we are’, I think if anything we deserve to be higher.

“We dropped points where we shouldn’t have, we’ve never really had any games where we think we’ve won that when we shouldn’t.

“It’s always a game we think ‘we could have picked up points there’ and we didn’t. I’d probably say there’s been about two games where we think they’ve outplayed us, they’ve been better than us and that was against Norwich and the top teams in the league.

“Every other game we’ve been in there, we’ve fought, we’ve worked hard, and we’ve had chances to win games.

“It’s testament to the club that we’re taking these scalps against other teams and going to places, Bristol City’s a huge club, we’ve gone there, won 3-2 and we’ve deserved to win the game and that’s what Luton Town can become hopefully.

“So if anything, we could be higher up and we deserve to be where we are if not higher.

“Top ten would be a good season for us considering we stayed up on the last day of course, but I think top ten is where we deserve to be and next season we need to push for something better than that.

“I don’t think we need to stay in this league, that’s not our expectation, not our aim anymore.

“We’ve evolved so much as a club that we can really push for something special.”