Talking Tactics | Luton Town v Swansea City
Swansea are back in action on Saturday afternoon as they travel to Kenilworth Road to take on Luton Town. Ahead of this one, WhoScored.com preview the league clash, taking a look at what to expect from the Hatters, the key battle and a key stat.
What to expect from Luton
Luton will be hoping to make a return to the Championship play-offs this season as they continue to push for a promotion to the top-flight that would cap their remarkable recovery after falling out of the EFL.
Coming into this match, they find themselves in just the right position to achieve the play-offs, sitting in sixth with a two-point margin, having won once in their last five league games.
Nathan Jones had done a brilliant job to steady the ship, maintaining the Hatters status in the Championship, before leaving for Southampton in the Premier League with Rob Edwards taking his place in the dugout back in November. The former Watford manager has performed well, winning 50% of his matches in charge.
Luton generally like to play with three centre-backs and two strikers and, with a WhoScored statistically calculated style of play of 'aggressive', as well as having 'aerial duels' as a strength, shows they like to dominate their opposition in their air defensively and offensively.
Edwards has two key players at the back, in Tom Lockyer (83) and Daniel Potts (62), who both rank highly for headed clearances in the Championship this season, with the pair proving to be two of Luton’s ever-presents in a side that has the joint third-best defence in the league, having only conceded 34 goals in 34 games.
The Hatters’ presence up top is also of note with forwards Elijah Adebayo (29) and Carlton Morris (23) both in the top five for headed efforts. They also rank highly for headed goals, especially Morris who is second highest with four.
Morris is behind only Chuba Akpom (6) in that list and is six off the Middlesbrough man’s total goals for the season, sitting as the Championship’s third-highest scorer with a return of 13 goals.
This means at both ends of the pitch, Luton are a difficult opponent to play against and something Swansea will have to find a way to deal with on Saturday
Key battle
The WhoScored.com match forecast suggests it is extremely likely that if Swansea go behind they will make a comeback, and that is something Joel Piroe knows all too well about.
In this same fixture last season, the Swans found themselves 3-0 down after 23 minutes. Piroe was one of three players brought on at half-time in order to try and bring the game back. He had a total of three shots in the game, but his most important came in second-half stoppage time when he struck from just outside the box into the bottom corner to secure a valuable point on the road.
After failing to find the net in four games, Piroe scored the opener in Monday’s 1-1 draw with Rotherham and will be desperate to add to his 12 league goals this season, which ranks him as the fourth highest scorer in the Championship.
In his way however will be Luton centre-back Lockyer, who ranks as the Hatters’ highest rated player (7.08) in the Championship this season. Lockyer has blocked 25 shots, the fourth-highest value in the league, and has won 131 aerial duels, the sixth-highest number in the division, making for an intriguing content between the Dutchman and the Welshman.
Key stat
One of Luton’s WhoScored.com weakness’ is avoiding offsides. In England’s second tier this season the Bedfordshire side actually rank second-highest for times caught offside (74) behind only Burnley (76).
The Swans will likely dominate the ball according to the match forecast and with Luton averaging only 44.9% possession this season compared with Swansea’s 64.1%, this seems likely.
If this is the case on Saturday, Swansea will want to make full use of the ball and be aggressive and clinical in the final third against a defensively-sound opponent.