Luton chief confident his players will learn from witnessing an 'elite' Liverpool at their very best

Luton boss Rob Edwards is confident that his players will have learnt some valuable lessons from their experience of a red-hot Anfield atmosphere during what was a 4-1 defeat to Liverpool on Wednesday night.

The Hatters went into the contest against a Reds side who desperately needed victory to maintain their challenge for the Premier League title this term, with only Ross Barkley who had ever stepped foot on to the pitch before in a playing capacity. The rest of the XI were soon to find out just what an intimidating place it is to play football though, despite taking the lead through Chiedozie Ogbene’s back post header on just 12 minutes. Undaunted by the deficit, and unable to restore parity by the interval, Jurgen Klopp’s side then went for the jugular in the second period, with one of the most famous grounds in English football at its absolute finest.

Roared on by near enough 60,000 supporters in what turned out to be a truly deafening atmosphere, the best Luton have played in front of by far this term, Liverpool were simply unstoppable, attacking the Kop End from the word go, scoring four times, and but for the reflexes of Thomas Kaminski, might have even added more, as the Hatters were just blown away on the night. Speaking afterwards, Edwards said: “It was like the Kop was just sucking it in, we couldn’t get out, we saw Anfield and Liverpool at its best, I thought they were brilliant.

“There won’t be many who have experienced Anfield like that, so that will be a bit of good learning for us. Hopefully in the future if we can still be coming back here it will be great. That’s got to be our aim, so maybe we can just manage those moments a little bit better, but you almost have to live through some of that to get better for next time and situations like it. I said to some of our younger players there, Chongy (Tahith Chong), Teden (Mengi), in a way it’s good as we’ll get better from it. We’ll have difficult moments, I don’t go in ranting and raving unless I see a lack of work ethic, we learn from the areas we made mistakes and hopefully that will stand us in good stead going forwards.”

Although Town had led 1-0 at the break, they were under the pump for a large part of the first half with Liverpool spurning chances through Luis Diaz, Harvey Elliott and Cody Gako, with the home supporters showing the occasional groan of frustration as they couldn’t break the Hatters’ resistance. It stayed that way until 10 minutes after the break when Virgil van Dijk met Alexis Mac Allister’s corner to beat Kaminski and release the pressure valve, Gakpo then making it 2-1 just moments later.

Klopp’s men went on to put their foot to the floor, as Diaz and Elliott were both on target to complete an utterly rampant second half, as despite being disappointed with the manner in which is side conceded, Edwards couldn’t be too harsh on his players, as he continued: “We had limited them probably to shots outside the box, half moments, an acrobatic kind of volley, but not too many dangerous moments. I felt like we had as much threat as them first half, although they had more shots, but in the second half, their real threat came from their counter pressing, their intensity.

"They put us on the back foot. Clearly it’s disappointing to concede from a corner and throw-in as well, so those are the bits we know we can improve on. Especially in that noise and your mate next to you can’t hear you, you’ve got to be able to deal with those situations better, but better teams have come here and it’s happened to them as well, so it’s not a disgrace for us. I don’t think we looked like a bad team, I just think we struggled with certain bits in the second half and played into their hands, and credit to them, I thought they were brilliant second half. We probably just played a little bit too short, didn’t use that space in behind, they could just step on to us and suffocate us in that second half.”

One thing that Luton didn’t do though was throw in the towel as even when 3-1 down, they were trying to get something from the game, Barkley beginning to orchestrate some good moves in the Luton midfield to win some dangerous free kicks. Unfortunately their finishing was wayward, while the Reds often had enough men back to deal with the situation, but it was pleasing to the Town chief, who added: “We kept going and that’s something that we promise and will always do. We’ve got a lot of supporters who came here to watch us and paid a lot of money to get here, travelled a long way to get here and we’ll never surrender or give up.

"We’ll keep fighting and the fans saw that as well. We have to accept defeat sometimes against a better team, but it wasn’t due to lack of effort or us trying to do what we feel were the right things. I have to credit the lads, they kept going, kept trying to do the right things, the right things that we see are the things that are going to help us long term. We tried to keep pressing, tried to step forward, we were still pushing at the end, we didn’t give up. We didn’t just sit back and accept defeat, we kept going, finished off with a few set-pieces, one or two half moments. I’m proud of the players but we came up against the better team, an incredible atmosphere and in that second half we just experienced what elite looks like.”