Those distinctive Hawthorns floodlights will be lit Friday night as Albion will play Luton in front of the Sky cameras (I'll be at work, so I'll have to watch a replay of the match on Setanta North America). We played Luton to a close draw earlier this season, but we need to earn a more favourable result at home against them this time round. It will be interesting to see if any pending transfer activity affects the teamsheets for the match. We bought Curtis Davies from the Hatters last year, and we are among a number of clubs interested in their prolific striker Rowan Vine.
West Bromwich Albion 3 Luton Town 2 It was a most dramatic finish at the Hawthorns Friday night as two late goals from Kevin Phillips - the second coming in injury time - gave us the three points. Given Albion's quite poor play on the night, we were particularly lucky to win. Luton had the best chances of the first half, but Jason Koumas brilliantly cut through two Hatters' defenders to get our first. In the second half, we controlled possession early on, but Luton found their feet. Then after a long spell of poor marking on our part, Luton ripped apart our defence. They equalised, then pulled ahead within the span of 10 minutes' time. With time running out, however, Phillips earned our equaliser... a solo effort where he latched onto a Zoltan Gera header and fended off FOUR Luton defenders to tuck the ball into the left corner of the goal. The injury-time winner was similarly brilliant as the 5'5"(!) Phillips out-leapt everyone in the box to head in Koumas' floated free kick. As much as I like dramatic wins, we could have spared ourselves some of the drama had we defended better tonight. We were quite fortunate Luton had not scored more times, particularly in the first half. We will get smashed by better opponents in the Championship if our players aren't willing to get stuck in and defend better.
Poor performance. The midfield never got hold of the game apart from a 15 minute spell at the start of the 2nd half. Kamara had a mare but we managed to pull a result from somewhere, just as the crowd had resigned themselves to only our 2nd home defeat in the league. Luton didn't deserve to win the game, they showed very little attacking intent for the 1st hour and it was only through poor play that the got back in it. They then smelled blood and got the 2nd in what was a very shoddy spell for Albion. In first half they created a couple of opportunities but hardly dictated the game. In fact neither side did. The neutrals must have changed channels after about 10 minutes. It was a massive result considering the performance and especially as Derby and Preston won today. On another note, i recently stated that Ipswich support that came here recently was awful but Luton surpassed them yesterday in what was simply a pathetic following. I have never seen such a quiet set of fans.