Joe Morrell was disappointed he couldn’t mark his Town debut with a victory but was pleased to be given the opportunity to play straight away, nonetheless.
The 23-year-old signed for the club on Thursday and was thrown straight in during the 2-0 defeat to Stoke City yesterday when he came on in the 67th minute.
Reflecting on the last few days, Morrell said: “It has all gone pretty quickly to be honest, a bit of a whirlwind! I had time to get my head around it because I have known about the interest for a while and I was trying to get it done as soon as possible.
“Being suspended for the last Wales game helped probably, it wasn’t as much as a rush as it potentially could have been so really excited to be here, obviously I have come here to play football so being in the squad today was good. Obviously, the result not so much but in football and in this division, we’ve got a quick turnaround for the next game.”
Whilst the Hatters dominated the statistics, it was Stoke who prevailed after two quick goals in the second half which Morrell described as disappointing.
"The gaffer said after the game, at this level you are coming up against teams who have got so much quality, ex-Premier League players and you are going to get punished for any little mistakes that you make.
“I felt that was probably the case today, if you look at the stats, which obviously don’t necessarily reflect the game, but we probably come out on top in all of them. But you need to do more than that to win a game of football and we just fell a little bit short I think today.”
The midfielder looked assured from the off, producing a perfect lofted ball towards Harry Cornick and even having a shot on target himself later in the game. On his personal performance, the former Bristol City man admitted: “From a selfish perspective it is probably a good time to come on when the team is two-nil down because they dropped a little bit deeper and I had a little bit more of the ball than I would have done in the first half when it was 0-0.
“I felt it was probably a good time for me to come on but just a shame we couldn’t get a goal. We obviously had chances in the second half but when you’re 2-0 down in this division, especially against a team like Stoke, it’s a long way back and it definitely showed today.”
Despite only being at Kenilworth Road for a number of days, Joe has settled in well with the group and he believes it helps having already known his two fellow Welsh internationals Tom Lockyer and Rhys Norrington-Davies.
“I have known Locky for a while, obviously he played in Bristol, the bad side of Bristol if you ask me! I’ve known Rhys a while as well, I played with him at young ages for Wales so obviously you ask them about it, they have been great welcoming me but at the same time, the rest of the lads have been fantastic as well and I would like to think if I didn’t know Locky and Rhys, they would treat me the same. It has been good.”