Striker can’t understand Luton’s defensive frailties

Luton shipped four goals for the second successive home game at the weekend during a 4-3 loss to Northampton Town, meaning they have now been breached 13 times in the last four games.

With Hatters conceding 32 goals already this term, only four more than second bottom Yeovil, Benson said: “It’s a theme of the gaffer and I’ve been with the gaffer for a long time now, over 11 years and it’s one of his big things.

“We’ve always been very sound defensively, always, and I’m out there, in training we’ve done the same things, but this year it’s just not happening, not working.

“We’re defensively sound first of all and then we look for the goals after that but it’s hard to explain because we work on it every day.

“It’s no good saying we can work on it as we’ve been working on it since the start of the season so something’s got to change. Thankfully I’m not the manager, not the one who’s got to sort it, but something has to be done.

“I don’t know how many goals we’ve let in this year in the league, but we’re nowhere near where we need to be in terms of defensively to start climbing back up the table.

“We’re not going to start climbing back up the table letting three goals in the last three games, we’re not going to get anywhere with those sorts of statistics, so I can’t really comment on what the gaffer has to do to change it, but he’s experienced enough.”

On the goals that Hatters let-in against Northampton at the weekend, Benson continued: “It’s not good enough by a long way.

“We can’t play two games at home, score six goals and not even have a point out of it, it’s not possible.

“Teams who are pushing for the right end of the table don’t do that, but we have and it’s not good enough.

“You can point fingers, but two of them are set-pieces, that’s a collective effort, the whole team should be doing better there, defence, midfield and attack.

“One of them the guy (Ricky Holmes) has got the ball 35 yards out from goal, not a man on him, turned, hit it well, don’t take anything away from that, but he shouldn’t be allowed to get it 35 yards out, turn and run 15 yards without even a tackle put on him.

“So we’ve got to be looking at the defence there. Their third, we tried to play offside, either way, the fella’s (Marc Richards) one of the top goalscorers in the league and he’s standing on the six yard box totally unmarked, so not good enough at all.