Luton Town, who are currently three points behind Nottingham Forest in 17th place, needs to defeat Fulham at Kenilworth Road today in order to have a chance of avoiding relegation on the last day of play. They also need to hope that Forest loses both of their remaining games against Chelsea and Burnley.
Even though Rob Edwards’ squad has only managed to accumulate 26 points so far this season, they have done an outstanding job of maintaining their competitiveness in spite of lacking the exceptional financial resources necessary to leap from the Championship and stay up with the majority of the other teams in the division. Luton has had to force itself to generate the utmost level of effort and application week in and week out in one of the harshest divisions in world football, while others have spent to dig themselves out of holes.
Any side can benefit from having that dedication to giving it your all each and every week, but Luton’s talent in the squad and what they have shown this season shouldn’t be diminished. Arriving from Nice on a free transfer in the summer, former Everton star Ross Barkley has revitalized his career by playing brilliantly in the heart of Luton’s midfield alongside Albert Sambi Lokonga, who is on loan from Arsenal.
Alfie Doughty, who arrived from Stoke City in 2022, and Elijah Adebayo, who left Fulham’s Academy for Walsall in 2019 and rose all the way to the Premier League from League Two, have also put up outstanding displays. Similar to this, Carlton Morris has shown he is a threat at any level. After scoring a career-high 20 goals in the Championship the previous game, he has 10 goals this season.
Those attackers are arguably the greatest place to start if we were to start listing the areas that West Ham needs to concentrate on in order to neutralize the threats from the opponent. West Ham has been known under David Moyes to defend the center of the pitch extremely well, forcing teams into the wide areas to cross with complete faith in the center-backs’ ability to clear, defend the box, and create counterattacking opportunities (possibly with a little assistance from the outstanding Tomáš Souček, who is both positionally and aerially).
Sadly, this season hasn’t been nearly as successful in these prior areas of strength, and West Ham has fallen in the league rankings for aerial duels (-2.22% from 2020/21 to 50%) and entered the bottom half of the table for the first time in four years.
Even though two percent may not seem like much, there have been larger jumps in the squad average, and those have primarily been seen in the center of the defense, where the current group hasn’t quite been able to match the amazing standard set by the former partnership of Craig Dawson and Kurt Zouma, who both finished in the top 15 players in the division for aerial duel success (69.1% and 68.9%, respectively) in 2020–21.
This is a serious issue before the Luton game. Luton is one of the best teams in the division when it comes to occupying the wide spaces, where other teams could find it difficult. This could be because they lack the attacking profiles required to fully use the danger of presentable crossing opportunities and more set-pieces.
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