Edwards left frustrated as Luton are knocked out by late Grecians sucker punch

Luton manager Rob Edwards was disappointed his side were hit by a late sucker punch as they were knocked out of the Carabao Cup with a 1-0 third round defeat against League One Exeter City this evening.

The Hatters boss made 10 changes for the contest, but despite having Elijah Adebayo, Cauley Woodrow and Tahith Chong in the side, while bringing on Jacob Brown, Chiedozie Ogbene and Carlton Morris in the second period, weren’t able to find the net.

With penalties looming, Town were then dumped out as Issa Kabore’s mistake at the back post was punished by Deme Mitchell in the 83rd minute, as although the goalscorer was sent off shortly afterwards for his second booking, the hosts held on.

Edwards said: “We need more desire to create chances and be more ruthless.

“I can’t keep saying the same things at the moment, we’ve been sucker punched really, a bad mistake on our part, and we’ve not found a way or had the quality tonight to get the ball over the line.

“Ultimately then you get punished and we don’t deserve to go through.

“I thought there were elements of the performance that were okay but we’ve certainly got to find the quality, desire, devilment to break teams down.

“There was a lack of space.

"As the game started opening up, we did start creating more problems for them and had a lot of the ball, but they defended the box very well.”