Luton Town’s Mufasa Moment

I know in my last blog I said that this one would chart my visit to Valley Parade, which is now more than a week ago, but yesterday was my first day off since that match and (after sleeping through most of it) I decided to listen to Luton Town’s visit to Bournemouth before starting to write.

This proved to be an excellent decision as the match at The Vitality Stadium, a.k.a. Dean Court was exponentially more exciting than the dross I endured in Bradford. This is down to one simple fact; the teams on the South Coast both went out fighting for the win in a way neither team in West Yorkshire had.

The only similarity between the games were that each half belonged to one team, with the visitors taking the first before the hosts fought back in the second.

The fight back in Yorkshire was paltry though with just the single goal pulled back to parity by the end of a game that really was a quintessential bore draw.

What happened on the South coast yesterday could be called many things, but boring? never boring.

Luton fans had travelled south with hope in their hearts as this was a match dedicated to their captain Tom Lockyer, who suffered a cardiac arrest on the pitch during the original fixture, and by half time it looked like being the perfect tribute.

Taking the lead within the first 10 minutes was an auspicious start and doubling their lead 20 minutes later was even better so by the time Ross Barkley rounded off the visitor’s hat-trick on the brink of half-time the away fans must have thought the game was won.

Surely nothing could go wrong now they had such a comfortable lead and had been cutting through their hosts with consummate ease, like a boiling knife through melted butter, the only question left was how much better their goal difference would look as they lifted themselves out of the relegation zone, right?

WRONG, VERY WRONG INDEED!!!

No-one except those in the dressing rooms will ever know what was said at half-time, but Andoni Iraola’s words worked miracles whilst Rob Edward’s fell flat as both teams emerged from the tunnel as entirely new proposition in the second half.

From being soundly booed off the field at half-time Bournemouth came out like a herd of stampeding wildebeest that Luton utterly failed to deal with. Instead the visitors were crushed under the weight of the onslaught, like Mufasa in The Lion King.

It took just 5 minutes for the rampaging visitors to pull one back, thanks to Dominic Solanke’s silky skill in the box to spin his marker and slide it home. This pushed the stampede into overdrive and 2 goals in as many minutes just after the hour mark saw the hosts restore parity on the night.

With 26 minutes of onslaught left to withstand it was now upto Luton’s players to show their steely determination to get over the line and for 18 minutes it looked like they might just manage it.

Once those 18 minutes had elapsed though they were looking for the referee to pull them over the top of the gorge to safety with his final whistle, but instead he was the scar of the story and kept them on the field to suffer their fate.

Fate’s crushing blow came moments later as Antoine Semenyo completed the brace he started 19 minutes earlier to hand the hosts a lead they would never relinquish, breaking every Luton Town fans heart in the process.

Depending on your allegiance this was either a comeback for the ages or the ultimate humiliation that saw all your hopes and dreams crushed into the depths of hell forever.

As a Brentford fan the dominant emotions for me were shock and overwhelming relief.

At halftime it looked like Luton’s win would leave us just 2 points above the dreaded dotted line and our visit to Burnley on Saturday would be a must-win match for a team that has won once outside London since March 2023 and have already lost to bottom-dwellers Sheffield United away from home this season.

The miraculous second half has kept our buffer at a far more comfortable 5 points and means that when I take my seat at Turf Moor it will be for the much less stressful must-not-lose relegation 6 pointer.

Meanwhile back at Kenilworth Road they have no time to linger on this humiliation as they have a proper relegation 6-pointer they must win in front of their home fans on Saturday, against Nottingham Forest.

A loss in their next match would be utterly devastating for Luton as Forest are the next team above them in the table and the team most likely to replace them going down to the shadowlands next season.

Burnley are absolutely destined for that elephant graveyard by the middle of May, but hopefully Brentford will have taken a huge step away from them once I am on the way home on Saturday.