[109], Luton Town supporters maintain a bitter rivalry with Hertfordshire-based Watford. [113] A character known as Happy Harry, a smiling man wearing a straw boater, serves as the team's mascot and appears on the Kenilworth Road pitch before matches. Jones had no previous experience in first team management, other than having briefly acted as a caretaker boss at Brighton in 2014, and he was employed by the Seagulls as a first team coach when he was approached by Luton.
He did just that, as Luton were crowned champions of League One, but the Championship would prove to be by far the toughest test yet for both Nathan Jones and Luton Town. [101] Outline planning permission for this ground, with potential to expand to 23,000 seats, was granted by Luton Borough Council on 16 January 2019. [9] The Dunstable Road ground was opened by Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, who also donated 50 towards the 800 building costs.
Just as important as his man management has been Lutons recruitment ever since their demise in the late 2000s. [16], Luton Town have traditionally used the town's crest as its own in a manner similar to many other teams. [7] Captain and left winger Bob Hawkes became Luton's first international player when he was picked to play for England against Ireland on 16 February 1907. Luton Town Football Club (/lutn/) is a professional association football club based in the town of Luton, Bedfordshire, England, that competes in the Championship, the second tier of the English football league system. This would become a bit of a recurring theme for the Hatters, who finished in the play-offs, but ultimately could not win the play-offs, in each of their first three seasons in the Conference. [C] Average attendances at Kenilworth Road fell with the installation of seats and the club's reduction in stature, dropping from 13,452 in 198283 to their 201415 levela slump of 35% over 32 years. Further pointing towards the galvanising effect that Jones has had on the club and its supporters.
[94], In 2007, the club's then-owners proposed a controversial plan to relocate to a site near Junction 12 of the M1 motorway, near Harlington and Toddington. [41] The club achieved its highest ever league position, seventh, under John Moore in 198687,[42] and, managed by Ray Harford, won the Football League Cup a year later with a 32 win over Arsenal. [26] During this period, Luton sides also featured two England international goalkeepers, Ron Baynham and Bernard Streten,[27][28] as well as Irish internationals Seamus Dunne,[29] Tom Aherne and George Cummins. Kick It Out described the campaign as a success, and encouraged other clubs to follow in Lutons footsteps, and not since 2018, when CEO Gary Sweet told a small pocket of supporters to stop chanting Tommy Robinsons name, has the club made headlines for all the wrong reasons. Luton first wore white and black between 1920 and 1973. [4][5] Before this there were many clubs in the town, the most prominent of which were Luton Wanderers and Luton Excelsior. Stoke had underachieved since dropping into the Championship, with one of the best squads on paper, in the division, and no doubt Jones saw it not only as a hefty pay rise, but also a chance to take them up and manage in the Premier League. [6], Initially based at Excelsior's Dallow Lane ground,[5] Luton Town began making payments to certain individual players in 1890. The new emblem depicted a stylised orange football, bearing the letters "Lt", surrounded by the club's name in navy blue text. A team including Bruce Rioch, John Moore and Graham French won the Fourth Division championship in 196768 under the leadership of former player Allan Brown;[8] two years later Malcolm Macdonald's goals helped them to another promotion,[36] while comedian Eric Morecambe became a director of the club. [8][10], Eight years after arriving at Dunstable Road, Luton moved again, settling at their current ground, Kenilworth Road, in 1905. Just as Luton looked to be on course for back-to-back promotions from League Two to the Championship, Nathan Jones left the club to replace Gary Rowett at Stoke City. Of the 55,000 fans at Wembley that afternoon, roughly 40,000 of them were supporting Luton, and they used the venue and occasion to stage a massive protest against the FA and the Football League. Nathan Jones failure at Stoke, in many respects, might prove to be beneficial to both him and Luton in the long run. The Hatters actually amassed 56 points in the 2008-09 season, which would have been enough to give them a 15th place finish in League Two, were it not for a 30 point deduction. During their heyday, which came during the late 1950s, Luton finished eighth in the First Division, above the likes of Manchester United, Chelsea, and Arsenal, and they reached the final of the FA Cup in 1959, where they lost 2-1 to Nottingham Forest in front of 100,000 spectators. With ten minutes left on the clock and Arsenal 21 ahead, a penalty save from stand-in goalkeeper Andy Dibble sparked a late Luton rally: Danny Wilson equalised, before Brian Stein scored the winner with the last kick of the match. [86], The original Main Stand burnt down in 1921, and was replaced by the current stand before the 192223 season. That makes things sound very simple, when, in reality of course, it wasnt. Founded in 1885, it is nicknamed 'the Hatters' and affiliated to the Bedfordshire County Football Association. 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The Championship attracts thousands of spectators on a weekly basis but rather than looking at average home attendances, we've crunched the numbers from club's away support. [108] Trust in Luton has, since March 2014, held the legal right to veto any changes to the club's identity, including name, nickname, colours, club crest and mascot. So Lutons new owners sought to rid the club of their associations, or perceived associations at least, with the far right and with hooliganism. [127] The most expensive player Luton Town have ever bought was Croatian goalkeeper Simon Sluga, who cost 1.5m from HNK Rijeka on 19 July 2019. I dont want to get too tied up within the weeds of Lutons various strains of extremism, whether that be Islamofascists or just straight up old fashioned fascists, but over the years, there have been times when Luton Town has been associated with more hard right and particularly anti-Muslim views, such as those espoused by the EDL.
[81] In 201920, Ryebridge Construction took up the vacated role of sponsoring the third kit,[82] and for the 202021 season, JB Developments will sponsor the home kit, while Star Platforms and Ryebridge Construction continue to sponsor the away and third kits. Still was, at the time of his departure, the longest serving manager in the Football League, but following nine years at the club, he felt undermined when the Dagenham board sold striker Dwight Gayle to Peterborough United without his permission.
Broadly speaking, Jones was considered to be a bit of a caricature at Stoke, and a bit of a joke, but for Luton, it is almost as though, as still a fairly inexperienced manager, Jones learnt a lot, and got a lot of his mistakes out of the way in the Championship elsewhere, without it costing them, before returning to the club. Luton began playing in white shirts, shorts and socks in 1979, with the orange and navy motif reduced to trim; navy shorts were adopted in 1984. In his first summer in charge, Jones brought in Danny Hylton from Oxford United, who scored 27 goals in his debut campaign, as Luton finished fourth in League Two, one place off automatic promotion, before losing to Blackpool in the play-off semi finals. [9] The club continued to enter a team to the United League for two more seasons, and won the title in 189798. This palette was retained until the 19992000 season, when the team played in orange shirts and blue shorts. [128], The youngest player to make a first-team appearance for Luton Town is Connor Tomlinson at 15 years and 199 days old in the EFL Trophy, replacing Zane Banton as a 92nd-minute substitute in a 21 win over Gillingham on 30 August 2016, after the club were given permission for him to play from his headteacher.[129]. [62][63] Luton achieved a second successive promotion in 201819, after they won the League One title, marking the club's return to the Championship after a 12-year absence.
[13][14] A key player of the period was Ernie Simms, a forward. The team has since made several attempts to relocate. Whilst Luton have spent next to nothing, they have a handful of notable departures. [8][51], While Newell's place was taken first by Kevin Blackwell and later former player Mick Harford,[52][53] the team was then relegated twice in a row, starting in 200607, and spent the latter part of the 200708 season in administration, thus incurring a ten-point deduction from that season's total.
Luton thereafter spent five seasons in non-League football before winning the Conference Premier in 201314, securing promotion back into the Football League. That has inspired great belief within the Luton squad that they are capable of going toe-to-toe with anyone, regardless of their budget or stadium, and that theyve no one to fear in the Championship. In their first season back in the second tier, Luton averaged 7,863 as they spent almost the whole season battling against the drop which was quite a sharp decrease from 9,516 when they won the League One title the season prior. [8], The club was relegated from the top division at the end of the 199192 season,[8] and sank to the third tier four years later. On Christmas Day, they were third, two points off the top of the table, and even by the middle of February they were still in the hunt for an automatic promotion place, just one point behind Wycombe Wanderers in third. [16] The badge was altered once more during the 200910 pre-season, with the red of the town crest being replaced with orange to better reflect the club colours. [8] "Controversial"[48] owner John Gurney unsettled the club in 2003,[48] terminating Kinnear's contract on his arrival in May;[48][49] Gurney replaced Kinnear with Mike Newell before leaving Luton as the club entered administration. Still is a man who deserves immense credit when it comes to the rise of Luton Town. The team was then relegated from the top division in 195960, and demoted twice more in the following five years, playing in the Fourth Division from the 196566 season. Luton Town's most recent successful period began in 198182, when the club won the Second Division, and thereby gained promotion to the First. [46] Under the management of Joe Kinnear, who had arrived halfway through the previous season,[47] the team won promotion from the fourth tier at the first attempt. Kenilworth Roads 10,356 capacity could be sold out in each and every game next season, if they are able to stage Premier League football and with a new home ground on the horizon the future is looking very bright for Hatters supporters. Lutons only sizable signing was the recruitment of Croatian goalkeeper Simon Sluga in the summer of 2019, after the club won promotion to the Championship. [117] Six players, Gordon Turner, Andy Rennie, Brian Stein, Ernie Simms, Herbert Moody and Steve Howard, have scored more than 100 goals for Luton. [102] In March 2021, the club announced that it intended to make a number of changes to the initial scheme to reflect changes caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, but that the capacity of the new stadium was still to be 23,000 and had a target opening date of 2024.
[7][9], The stadium now has an all-seater capacity of 10,356 and is situated in the Bury Park area of Luton. John Gurney, a businessman who was once arrested and charged with conspiring to import cocaine before being acquitted at trial, outlined his intention to build a Formula One track around a 50-70,000 seater stadium with a removable pitch, suspended, by concrete stilts, above the M1 motorway back when he bought the club in 2003. In other news, Man City join Liverpool in race to sign 129m star, but there's a problem. Nonetheless, it turned a lot of South Asians in particular, and others no doubt, away from the club. Have something to tell us about this article? Scroll and click through the pages to discover second-tier side's average away attendance this season: Average away attendance for 2019/20: 1,040, This website and its associated newspaper are members of Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO). During the close season, he released twelve players and signed eleven new ones. In the 201213 FA Cup fourth round, Luton won their away tie against Premier League club Norwich City 10 and, in doing so, became the first non-League team to beat a side from England's top division since 1989. It was an almighty task, but the Hatters lost just one of those last nine games. Opposite the eponymous Kenilworth Stand is the Oak Road End, which has evolved from a stand first used exclusively by Luton supporters, then later by away supporters, and now used by both except in times of high ticket demand from away clubs. The Hatters are edging towards booking their spot in the second tier play-offs, and will be confident of putting in a strong performance against any opposition at Kenilworth Road should they get there.
It also meant that strong attendances and fan buy-in was essential. There could not be a Luton Town Football Club which claimed to represent the local community without those groups. 2019/20 was actually the lowest average attendance the Hatters had registered since they were promoted back to the EFL, adding some context as to just how crucial a decision it was to sack Graeme Jones and reappoint Nathan Jones in the build-up to the seasons resumption in 2020.
Luton, meanwhile, not only decided to replicate their strategy of appointing a manager with no previous first team managerial experience, which had worked out so well for them last time out, they also decided to replicate appointing someone named Jones as Graeme Jones, who had been out of work since losing his job as Darren Moores assistant at West Brom, was handed the top job. These colours were retained for over half a century, with the colour of the socks varying between white and black, until Luton changed to orange, navy and white at the start of the 197374 season. Wanderers secretary Herbert Spratley seized upon Deacon's idea and arranged a secret meeting on 13 January 1885 at the St Matthews school rooms in High Town.