End of season review part 1

We came into our first season back in the second flight of football with optimism for the future, but with more hope than expectation, and I would hazard a guess that the honest amongst us would admit to having little more hope than to finish clear of a relegation dogfight.

It was with much delight, if not a little surprise, that we witnessed August slip away with Luton in third place behind eventually promoted teams Sheffield United and Reading, having won four drawn one and lost one.

The end of September saw the same three in the same order at the top of the table and ditto October.

So where did it go ‘wrong?’ I am not so sure it could be described as going wrong as such. We played five and won two and lost three in November, which saw us slide to 5th, our record in November being only the twelfth best in the league.

By New Year’s Eve we had dropped to 10th where we remained at the end of the season, our December record being only 20th best with four points from six games.

If you made a league table of each month then Luton’s monthly positions on performance in each month alone were as follows:

Aug 3rd
Sept 8th
Oct 12th
Nov 12th
Dec 20th
Jan 11th
Feb 21th
Mar 19th
Apr 9th
May 12th

The average position is 10.6 and if you take the average after Curtis Davies left the club it was 11.3. However, taken individually they do not make happy reading!

As you can see our finishing position is higher than those figures but pretty close so we have finished where we deserved to be. The heady heights of August really were just that – August! That surprised me because my memory of the season suggested that we were doing better than that until Christmas, which is not born out by the statistics!

However, it does seem apparent that the lack of Curtis or a suitable replacement did have an effect on the team’s overall performance, and it would seem, therefore, that rectification of that weakness should in itself put us into play-off territory and that if Mike Newell is able to strengthen in other areas to give more depth in the event of injury and suspension, then possibly better than that.

My own opinion is that this has been a successful first season back at this level and anything less than play-offs next season will be looked upon as failure. However, 10th is a long way clear of relegation and the other promoted teams both flirted with relegation for much of the season, putting some pundits’ opinions in their place.

To be continued!

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