RESULT: 5:3 - shocking defensive display scuppered the great escape

Where to start with this one? My last update said "please Luton, don't mess it up".  Well if there ever was an advert for "how to mess it up", this game was it.  5-1 down after the hour mark - our defence made the low scoring, out of form WBA look like Barcelona.  Big game nerves? Mental exhaustion?  Poor game plan? I can't get my head around the performance - but having conceded just 4 in the previous 9 games, we then proceeded to look as bad as at our lowest points this season.

Being there - I spent most of the time screaming at our players to mark up, close down and stop leaving 20 yards of space down the flanks, particularly our left hand side. Maybe I wasn't shouting hard enough. We needed a leader in the middle, one with experience - it was crying out for Naismith, so why Bloomfield waited until the 84th minute to put him on is beyond me. The jury is out on him as a manager if I am honest. and if I hear him say he's "disappointed" any more, there will be no accounting for my actions.  Maybe a sternly worded letter will head to his office. West Brom played as a team with no shackles, no pressure and it showed. Why is it we manage to end teams' poor runs? (looking at you as well Blackburn (H)). 

All of the recent results, grinding out wins away at Cardiff, Hull and Derby, and beating play-off contending Coventry and Bristol City  counted for nothing in the end, in a game where a draw would have been enough (potentially). We couldn't rely on Portsmouth to do us any favours, but at 5-1 down, the crowd clung onto that as our only hope.  It was pathetic and dismal.  Annoyingly as West Brom relaxed further, job done, the Hatters scored twice - but I don't think the WBA defenders were trying that hard. Losing by 2 flattered us - yet it all seemed like we would be set for a good match when Alli equalised immediately after we conceded on 7 minutes, having started well. "Keep it steady and level" should have been our aim - but chance after chance in the first half an hour resulted in 3 goals being conceded and it could have been worse.

Our 8th relegation since the 1980s. Maybe that "Supercomputer" was right all along... and we join an exclusive group of teams that have done back to back relegations from the Premier League, with Swindon Wolves and Sunderland.  Finding stats on pre 1992 is a lot harder, but Wolves again and Bristol City also dropped down from the top flight and both indeed did suffer a third relegation - something we remember all too well, 18 years ago.  Let's not try and do that again?!

Well it's never boring being a Luton fan.  We do have more money and we do have a stadium on the way - issues that have blighted us for too long.  And ermmm. we will have a new kit made out of recycled toilet paper or something. The future's bright but right now, it feels turd-brown at the moment.