Cheered out, booed off: Wilshere’s Luton bow ends with defeat and jeers

<p>Jack Wilshere got the full managerial experience as Luton lost 2-0 to Mansfield – serenaded and jeered in 90 minutes</p><p>Getting booed off after your first match, and booed off with a fair degree of vituperation to boot, was not how Jack Wilshere intended <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/oct/13/jack-wilshere-confirmed-as-luton-manager">his managerial career</a> to begin. But that was what he endured as he led his players off the Kenilworth Road pitch past a seething Luton fanbase, who two years ago were loving life in the Premier League.</p><p>A 2-0 defeat by Nigel Clough’s Mansfield was no disgrace, a finely balanced contest decided by the chances Luton failed to take and those that Mansfield didn’t. It was a loss that left the hosts 14th in League One, eight points off the playoff spots, but Clough was positive about Luton’s prospects of turning things around under Wilshere, and surely that is correct. It would be wrong, though, not to note that there was an eerie note of fatalism in the ground, even as an apparent new era was only just getting under way.</p> <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/football/2025/oct/19/jack-wilshere-luton-manager-gets-booed-by-fans-after-defeat">Continue reading...</a>