With the Football League season getting underway in less than a week’s time, positivity is in the air for Luton Town’s return to the Championship. Fresh from May’s title win, the buoyant Hatters head into a division as underdogs, something of a rarity. Since being relegated from the Football League in 2008, the fall and further fall has been well documented, yet this is a club that wouldn’t die. Since winning the Skrill Premier in 2014, the Town narrowly missed out on the League Two play-off places in 2015. A second-placed finish in 2017/18 was enough to bring Luton out of the fourth division.
Luton Town’s Return to the Second Tier
Context
What happened in 2018/19 was something quite remarkable. Luton became the first side since Peterborough United a decade earlier to seal back-to-back promotions from League Two to the Championship. The following season, however, Posh were relegated, finishing 24th. Relegation would, naturally, be a setback to Luton’s owners, 2020 Ltd, and their long-term plan to reach the Premier League. This is something they have planned extremely well for. From the drawn-out appointment of Graeme Jones, whom the club were talking to since January, to smashing the club’s transfer-record, which has stood for 32 years.
International Pedigree
How well Luton recruit will go a long way to defining their season. The £1.3 million signing of Croatian international goalkeeper Simon Sluga has gone down well with supporters. At 26, Sluga joins from HNK Rijeka, a Croatian side who have played the likes of AC Milan in the Europa League. So why swap European football for England’s second tier? For Sluga, it was all about the managers’ vision for the club: “When he told me about his vision of football and his vision of me in the goal and everything, it meant a lot to me. It’s one of the main things that made me decide to come here. I want to help the club to have a great season, to stay in the league and if we can, to go to the play-offs.”
Improvements
Just how far away the play-offs are is another question, but the ambition is admirable. Realistically this season, merely surviving will be the next milestone in 2020’s Luton journey. With the new 17,000-seater stadium getting the go-ahead back in January, Luton’s potential is limitless. As sentimental as Kenilworth Road is, the club simply cannot grow and sustain without a new home. Sales of key players James Justin and Jack Stacey will fund more than just new arrivals. The money received will be used in areas of the ground, to be eligible for Championship standards.
An upgrade of the media gantry along with electronic advertising hoardings are small but noticeable touches in the process of freshening up an old stadium that will need to be rocking and bouncing all throughout this upcoming rollercoaster of a season. Unbeaten at home in 2018/19, it is unlikely that will remain the same this term, but there’s no doubt the fans will make it as close to a fortress as possible.
What It’s Taken to Get Here
With Middlesbrough the visitors on the opening night of the Football League, excitement will overtake expectation for the first time in many a year. From suffering away days at Braintree Town, Barrow and a 5-1 hammering at Gateshead during the non-league era, trips to the likes of Fulham, Leeds United and Nottingham Forest is the perfect reward. No matter how Friday, August 2 goes in terms of the result, second-tier football is back in Bedfordshire.
Positivity is in the air, and Luton Town are on the rise again.
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