What’s going wrong at Luton Town this season?

• Luton Town are sitting just outside the relegation zone in the Championship.
• The Hatters got relegated from the Premier League last season and have found things tricky since.
• Ross Barkley, Andros Townsend and Chiedozie Ogbene were among those to leave after relegation.
• Manager Rob Edwards is under pressure but seems to have the support of most at the club.

Burnley and Sheffield United, both relegated from the Premier League last season, are firmly in the chasing pack behind Championship leaders Sunderland. But Luton Town, relegated alongside them, are languishing just outside the bottom three on goal difference with just five points from a potential 21 in their last seven games.

The Hatters, of course, didn’t have the best time in the Premier League last season, but for their first season back in the top flight after over two decades, an 18th-placed finish didn’t seem awful. Manager Rob Edwards kept his job and was allowed to have another attempt at getting Luton to the Premier League and keeping them there. While there were a few ins and outs, wholesale changes weren’t made, so why is it all going wrong? 

Luton’s fairytale rise coming to an end

When comparing Luton to Burnley and Sheffield United, it’s important to note that they lack their Premier League pedigree. Burnley enjoyed six consecutive seasons in the top flight from 2016-17 to 2021-22, even finishing seventh in 2017-18. Sheffield United had a two-season spell from 2019-20 to 2020-21, meanwhile, finishing ninth in the former.  

Around this time, the Hatters were in the Championship and League One, in the final stages of their impressive rise that began in 2013-14, when they got promoted from the Conference Premier. It shouldn’t be disrespectful to the club to suggest that they may have overachieved by getting to the Premier League when they did, and perhaps they’re finding they’re where they should be with the squad they currently have. 

But then, Luton have a strong squad by Championship standards, and shouldn’t be where they are in the table. New signing Victor Moses might be in his thirties now but offers Premier League experience, as does midfielder Shandon Baptiste, formerly of Brentford. Defensive midfielder Tom Krauß, on loan from Mainz 05, has a lot of Bundesliga experience too.  

Yes, Ross Barkley, Andros Townsend, Ryan Giles, Gabriel Osho and Chiedozie Ogbene all departed, while loanees Issa Kaboré and Albert Sambi Lokonga both returned to their parent clubs, but the majority of the Premier League team are still there. Their squad is full of seasoned Championship performers, but they aren’t clicking together. 

There’s possibly a bit of a hangover from the Premier League season and all the intensity that comes with a top-flight campaign. Look at Wolverhampton Wanderers, who just over a decade ago suffered back-to-back relegations from the Premier League to League One. Luton went from being a team with almost no expectations on them. (They were the underdogs in virtually every game) to a team who are expected to perform well and pick up as many points as possible, something that’s always going to be tricky to adjust to. 

Is the manager to blame?

Manager Rob Edwards, still held in high regard by fans for his achievements in taking Luton to the Premier League, is a man under pressure. He’s been backed by the club, as well as the players themselves, and has enough credit in the bank to have the opportunity to turn things around. Perhaps he needs to shake up his style. Luton’s tactics under Edwards haven’t changed massively dependent on the league they’ve been in, and there’s maybe an argument that he’s not using his players to their full potential in a league in which they’re no longer the underdogs. 

Last month, after Luton threw away a 2-0 lead against fellow underachievers Coventry City to lose 3-2, captain Carlton Morris said that the players were at fault rather than the manager, who blamed himself. And a week prior, the Hatters beat rivals Watford 3-0 in a morale-boosting victory, giving fans something to cheer about in a difficult season.

It’s still relatively early days

Ultimately, it’s no secret how tight the Championship is. A few good results can have you hurtling up the table, or vice versa. Luton are only nine points away from the play-offs, so even a month of good results could see the club’s season change. By the time Christmas comes around, we could be having an entirely different conversation.  

It’s not even a third of the way through the Championship season yet, and there’s more than enough time for Luton to turn things around. It might not be the start of the season they wanted, but perhaps it’s best not to read too much into it. There’s still plenty of time for the Hatters to adjust back to second-tier life, even if it means there won’t be an instant return to the Premier League.

There are at least three teams worse than Luton in the Championship, and relegation back to League One for the first time since 2018-19 is unlikely. Rather, it looks as though this will be a season of adjustment. Can Luton get back to the Premier League next season? It would be a tough ask looking at the strength of the teams at the top of the Championship and bottom of the Premier League, but they’ve done it before and could well do it again. 

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