Luton Town manager Jack Wilshere admitted his team were architects of their own downfall after a calamitous defensive showing resulted in a humiliating 5–0 defeat at Barnsley on Saturday.

The Hatters travelled to Oakwell brimming with confidence, having put together a five-match unbeaten run and recorded three consecutive clean sheets for the first time in more than two years. But all that momentum evaporated in Yorkshire as Wilshere’s side produced a display riddled with individual errors, each one ruthlessly punished by a clinical Barnsley outfit.

The collapse began just seven minutes in when Zack Nelson’s loose pass was intercepted, freeing Reyes Cleary to lift the ball over Josh Keeley. The Luton goalkeeper then compounded the misery on 35 minutes by gifting possession in the build-up to Patrick Kelly making it 2–0. Moments before half-time, Liam Walsh brought down Davis Keillor-Dunn, allowing Luca Connell to bend the resulting free-kick past a stranded Keeley.

Things only worsened after the interval. Gideon Kodua diverted the ball into his own net before Keillor-Dunn embarrassed Kal Naismith to complete Barnsley’s fifth with a quarter of an hour still to play. The scoreline might have been even more severe had Adam Phillips not fired wide late on.

Reflecting on the defeat, Wilshere didn’t hide his frustration.

“I thought we actually started reasonably well, with chances at both ends, but we gifted them opportunities far too cheaply,” he said. “In this league, if you don’t take your chances and you hand the opposition goals, they’ll punish you. We made life really difficult for ourselves by conceding so many easy goals.”

Wilshere stressed the need for greater composure and consistency in possession.

“We have to be more clinical and make sure we’re controlling their players whenever we’re attacking. A lot of the goals came from transition moments, and we’ll keep facing that because we want to dominate the ball. Today it was far too easy for them. Technical efficiency is what I call it—we work on it every day and we simply have to be better.”

The Luton boss said he planned to rewatch the match to fully understand where things went wrong.

“I need to get on the bus and go through each goal again—look at the positions, the mistakes, everything,” he added. “I felt we were making progress defensively. We’ve shown we can be compact and defend as a unit, and we’ve kept clean sheets recently. But today we just weren’t good enough in that area. Going forward we still have improvements to make, but defensively this was a big step backwards.”