Luton boss not expecting to make loads of changes when facing ‘brilliant’ Manchester City
Luton boss Rob Edwards isn’t anticipating making wholesale changes to his side for their FA Cup fifth round clash against a ‘brilliant’ Manchester City at Kenilworth Road this evening.
The Hatters chief has stuck to his guns and played strong XIs in all three of Town’s matches in the competition so far, as they saw off Bolton Wanderers in the third round after a replay and then won 2-1 at fellow top flight opponents Everton. With the holders on their way to Bedfordshire this evening and Luton without seven first team players in Elijah Adebayo, Sambi Lokonga, Marvelous Nakamba, Jacob Brown, Issa Kabore, Mads Andersen and Tom Lockyer, then discussing what kind of team he will put on the field, Edwards said: “We’re going to give it everything so you won’t be seeing us changing loads of players and resting loads of people, we’re not in that position now with the amount of people we’ve got out anyway.
“We’re playing Manchester City, so if I go now and try to start being too clever and make too many changes against arguably the best team in the world then it could be a very long night for us. It could be a very long night for us anyway, so it’s the next game, it’s the most important one for us, so we’ll try and play the team that we think is the strongest one available to us to try and win the game.
“It’s a difficult night for us, they’re brilliant. We’ve got eight key players missing anyway so we’re already a little bit understrength. We’ve got to make sure, like we will do, we go and put out the best team that we think is available for us to try and be really competitive in the game.
“We’ve got probably as difficult a game as you could get at the moment, so we know it’s going to be a challenge to progress but we’re looking forward to that challenge. It’s brilliant to go up against the best players in the world (against Liverpool). We experienced a little bit of that last week, it makes me hungry, makes us hungry as a football club to keep progressing and getting better.
Luton have already run Manchester City close this term when going down 2-1 to Pep Guardiola’s title-chasing side back in December, as they had taken the lead through Adebayo’s towering header just before the break, but quickfire second half goals from Bernardo Silva and Jack Grealish saw the visitors earn all three points.
Edwards feels they can use the performance that day to prove that they can run a side who also won the Premier League and Champions League last season close, as he continued: “It does give us confidence and we believe in ourselves anyway. We always recognise and respect the opposition that we’re going up against. We’ve probably in the last couple of games come up against, along with Arsenal at the moment, you’d say two of the best three sides in the country.
“It’s going to be really really difficult, we know that, but we always believe, we always do otherwise it’s hopeless isn’t it? What’s the point in turning up? Let’s hope there’s a little bit of magic of the FA Cup, but we’ll certainly give it everything. I think everyone knows City’s players pretty well, almost all of their games are on the TV, and everyone knows them.
“We have played against them as well, but we’ll do all the work on them as we do for every single game anyway, and try to provide the players with the right amount of information going into it. There’s some fascinating stuff, some brilliant things, and I think it’s good as there’ll be some different stuff to the first game now, so really looking forward to it.”
