Edwards reveals the challenge he set his Luton players ahead of Crystal Palace victory

Luton boss Rob Edwards revealed he challenged his players to make sure they secured a first Premier League home victory of the season in the build-up to the 2-1 victory over Crystal Palace on Saturday.

Going into a maiden top flight campaign in over 40 years, it was anticipated by many that Kenilworth Road would act as a fortress this term, with opposition players supposedly struggling to get to grips with the tight nature of the stadium and vociferous atmosphere.

It hadn’t quite happened that way though, Town gleaning just two points from five matches in front of their own fans, with draws against both Wolves and Liverpool, losing to West Ham, Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur.

They had managed to take four points on the road, winning at Everton and drawing with Nottingham Forest, which meant that with Arsenal, Manchester City, Newcastle United and Chelsea all heading to Bedfordshire before the turn of the year, the pressure was ramped up by Edwards and his coaching staff when the Eagles arrived at the weekend.

Town’s players responded magnificently, Teden Mengi and Jacob Brown on target in the second half to finally give their manager the first home success he had been craving, with over 11,000 able to celebrate a maiden top flight win at the ground since 1992 as well.

The boss admitted he had targeted the fixture against their mid-table opponents beforehand, as speaking in his post-match press conference, he said: “Everyone made a big thing of Kenilworth Road this year and how important it’s going to be and before today we’d had more points away from home.

"I don’t really care where they come from as long as we get enough, but all of our games here have been tight. I do think here is where the majority of them (points) are going to come. I think we should have had more here already but we haven’t so that is again why we challenged the players and again they delivered.

“All of the games we’ve lost have been by the odd goal. They’ve been tight games, so that gives us belief and confidence that we’re doing the right things but we can still be better and improve. It wasn’t perfect but it was enough.”

Town striker Brown, who netted his first ever goal in the Premier League when sliding home Chiedozie Ogbene’s low cross, spoke of how the squad had a burning desire in their preparations to finally register a long overdue three points.

He continued: “We said from the start of the week that we’re aiming for the win at the end of this weekend. We set our minds on it and we’ve all worked really hard this week and we’ve got that win.

"We can be happy about that, focus on the next game, building on that and hopefully trying to get another win.”

Going into the interval on level terms, it was the Eagles who had marginally the better of the opening 45 minutes, prevented from taking the lead by a wonderful double stop from Thomas Kaminski.

Following the interval, Town looked to up the pressure themselves, as they continued their theme of scoring late goals, now netting eight times after the 80-minute mark has passed.

On what he told his players during the break, Edwards added: “That we can be better. I thought we got the time of our press wrong, there were four or five moments and they were able to just go through us a couple of times.

"So we needed to turn the heat up and get the timing of our press right out of possession. With the ball I thought our plan was right, there was some good stuff that we played, but we felt that our execution of a couple of things, especially the last chase needed to be a little bit tighter and better.

"There wasn’t anything wrong with the gameplan though, it was just being better with executing it to be honest, that was the big message.”