No talk of play-off hoodoo for Luton as Edwards plots second leg turnaround

Town boss Rob Edwards doesn’t believe Town’s terrible record in the play-offs will have any bearing on this evening’s second leg tie against Sunderland.

The Hatters are looking to finally put to bed their lengthy and pretty miserable run at this stage of the season, as their past six attempts to win promotion via the end of year lottery have all ended in heartbreak.

Their most recent attempt was last term, beaten 2-1 on aggregate by Huddersfield, while back in the 2016-17 League Two campaign, they were knocked out 6-5 by Blackpool, as despite leading 3-1 with 14 minutes to play, conceded twice, including in the final minute to suffer a crushing defeat.

Luton have also been beaten in the semi-finals by York City and Crewe Alexandra in their history with final losses to York again, plus AFC Wimbledon when back in the Conference.

However, that counts for nothing under Edwards, as he said: “No, that is a thing, but that doesn’t mean anything in the here and now.

"What’s happened in the past doesn’t affect what happens now.

“I don’t think anyone’s mentioned it to be honest, apart from in the press.

"So I don’t see anything from us or the players at all, we've not spoken about it or mentioned it at all.”

Although Town are looking to reach Wembley from a goal behind, beaten 2-1 at the Stadium of Light on Saturday, there is plenty of recent evidence that is a possibility, Brentford in both 2020 and 2021 having lost 1-0 away from home in the first leg, but then triumphing 3-1.

On his side’s chances of doing just that, Edwards continued: “Of course we can, we’ve got 90-plus minutes to win a game of football and we’ve done that pretty well this season.

"We believe completely still.

"We know it’s a difficult task, we know they are a good team, but we’re in the play-offs, we expect it to be a challenge.

"We didn’t think it was ever going to be a walkover or anything like that.

"We’re one-down going into the home leg, but we’re more than capable of winning this game of football.”

Despite surrendering their 14-game and almost three month unbeaten run at one of the worst possible times when beaten on Wearside, Edwards didn’t believe for one second it would have an adverse affect on his players heading into the return leg.

He added: “No, I don’t think so, and I realise that over 90 minutes we lost the game but I still see it as half time in the tie.

"That's the way we’re going to look at it and view it, and it’s half time now, we’re down, we’ve got to find a way to get back in.

“You can look at where we finished in the league which suggests we are a good team, we can win games of football.

"We’re well aware now that they come into it ahead, they have that little bit of an advantage, but one goal from us can take it to extra time or further.

"We believe that we can do it, we know we’re going to have to keep them quiet.

"Sometimes you can’t legislate for a bit of magic like (Amad) Diallo did in that first half, that strike was actually world-class, it was that good.

“That’s why their xG (expected goals) was so low, they scored two but one was probably 0.01 chance, amazing finish.

"We kept them quiet for the whole game really, the second was obviously a short corner with an amazing finish so we know we have to keep them quiet which is a challenge.

"But they’re going to have to keep us quiet as well, and again we need to make sure we ask them questions and put it on them.”