REACTION: Karl On Luton Defeat

There were no excuses from Manager Karl Robinson as the U’s lost to an injury-time goal at home to Luton last night.

“I can’t ask for any more effort” he told iFollow. “Sometimes you have to roll with the punches. We are sick of hurting week in week out but I have to be brutally honest and shoulder the blame because I am the Manager. Tiger knows how hard we work and knows what we are trying to achieve and there are so many things you could blame but I don’t want to sit here and do that.

“I think if you ask the players they will say that everything was done properly but at the end of the day it’s only the result that matters. It is a difficult place to be when you are the Manager - a lonely place at times- but you have to take the brunt of it and I apologise to everybody. I have faith in myself and do think things have happened beyond our control in some games

“At the time of the sending off we were set to make substitutions to go and try and win the game. We were bringing off Jon Obika and Shandon Baptiste and were actually going to do it earlier but Jamie Hanson took a knock and we were looking at whether he needed to come off or whether it was still Shandon. The ball then stayed in play for two or three minutes and then all of a sudden things changed. The sending off was just youthful exuberance and you have to go through moments like that with him; he is the future of this football club.

“Tactically I think we got it right. We found it hard to cope with them in the middle at times in the first half but I thought we started the second half really well but a little bit of naivety let them back in to it. I won’t apologise for hanging on for a draw at the end when we went down to ten men but fundamentally, I have to take most of the burden for the defeat.”

See the full interview in iFollow