The double drop
Hatters humbled and relegated again. The absolute state of us.
Luton, my Luton. Team of once inexpensive yet unexplainable collective power. Rising from football’s shitty foothills, sparkling into the Premier League like a mythical mist at the dawn of something that felt truly different. O brothers, where art thou?
Relegation happens. Relegations happen. But not like this.
The manner of the downfall of these representatives of our manor has made Town’s double drop from the top table back to the bench by the bogs painful to watch. Embarrassing. Shameful it was. And a new one on me as a Luton fan, I must admit.
Saturday’s clown car return to ineptitude when it mattered most felt like the footballing Gods had checked back in on Luton’s Great Escapists one last time and decided that — on balance— the way they’ve played this season, it turns out they don’t deserve to get away with this one after all. Because if we had somehow have scraped that elusive extra point somewhere along the line: got away with it, we would have done.
This Luton Town side didn’t deserve to stay up. Maybe Matt Bloomfield did for the turnaround in the last couple of months. Maybe Alli, Aasgaard, McGuinness and Makosso did for showing at least some energy. Some life. Some glimpses of quality. But the rest of them?
People are looking for answers. Podcasters are probing. Messageboarders are messageboarding like it’s 2002. But let me save you a job, mate: Basically, I’ve checked all possibilities and it’s come down to the calculator. And by calculator, I mean it’s come down to the fucking orange home shirt, with the white fucking stripe on it. The kit of absolute dismal dread.
Relegated in ‘75. Two failed Conference playoff campaigns in the 2010s. Relegation in 2024. Relegation in 2025. A shirt with a CV worse than one of those Mark Lawrenson ones with the extra collar and cuffs for no reason. I don’t care whether next season’s home kit is made from the recycled Zombie Knives of Farley Hill or the tears of a thousand bullied puppies: if it’s orange with a white stripe down one side, go back to your constituencies and prepare for division four, lads.
I don’t know if the shirt design was Gary Sweet’s idea (I know some of you deffo voted ORANGE in the kit vote, I remember, so you can hold your share of the blame too, mate) but fingers are inevitably pointing his and the Board’s way for the outcome of this past 18 months. And like Gareth Keenan in the Office knew deep down, eventually they are going to have to wear this one.
So what actually has happened at Luton Town?
Our recruitment, lauded the country over just a couple of years ago, has faltered. Nothing came off in the January window of the Premier League and the summer that followed wasn’t much better. Too often we were left threadbare, hoping and praying that some of modern football’s most injury prone talent would suddenly do the impossible and play more than four matches in a row.
So much of the wonderful, hazy dream-like promotion season seems in hindsight to have come down to some Lutonian hamstrings holding out against all odds until the job was done. The gamble of finding value in the discarded dodgy ankles and calves of the English football pyramid paying off for one glorious run to Wembley Way.
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These were not budget-busting future-of-the-football-club-as-a-going-concern gambles granted, but gambles they continued to be. And too many.
Sweet and the Board rightly took credit for the successes of the football operation, described by Gary as being greater than the vision and drive of just one man in Nathan Jones — an argument that was seemingly borne out with promotion to the Premier League under his successor Handsome Rob — but they must take the criticism on the chin now.
Despite relegation from the Premier League, the players in the Luton squad should have been of sufficient quality to regroup in the Championship. To stay up at the very least.
But something had gone.
Some very good players left as was inevitable with relegation (injury prone ones in their own right). But with stalwarts Pelly, Berry, Fred and Potts out of the door, and with Lockyer still side-lined, that connection with the story-so-far, to the belly of this Bedfordshire beast, finally seemed to be surplus to requirements.
Nothing lasts forever of course, but there was a heart and soul to the squad that needed to be kept alive during the transition, or replaced with new characters that embodied the grit and fight and relentless joy of Luton Town’s modern heroes.
Maybe the players that remained were drained by the intensity of playing above themselves week in week out, or from the emotion of nearly losing their teammate Tom Lockyer twice. Maybe the fairy tale bollocks attached to it all took its toll (guilty). Maybe some just had their heads turned as the glare of the Barclays began to dim and their parachutes fluttered in the new quiet of their descent towards solid ground. Maybe we’ll never know for sure.
When it became clear the players were not capable of saving themselves, not letting Rob go after the Boro game proved in hindsight to have been a misstep too far for Sweet and the Board.
Edwards was ready to go. He needed to step away and he couldn’t have made that clearer without resigning on live TV. There was enough time to turn it all around. Whether you want to argue his extended stay was too sentimental or too naïve, history has proven that when the change came it was too late. Just. FFS.
This relegation feels different to the others I can remember because, for a glorious change, the club is not in crisis. It’s not rotten to the core, nor are we being fleeced or mistreated by any force outside or inside the club. We are richer than we’ve ever been and come the summer, there will be people building a new football ground in the heart of Luton Town centre. For us.
As indefensible as the football has been to watch for a while, the future of the club remains extremely bright. 2020 and Sweet have prioritised the sustainability of the club over the sustainability of my patience with shite defenders and impotent strikers in the short term, as they always said they would. That decision feels unpopular today, but it remains the right thing to do. Lessons about the running of the football team itself will need to be learned fast however, and ideally before we take our positions at Hitchin (a) once more.
So, what have we learned from all of this? That’s right: if you didn’t vote for the white home shirt, this is all on you.
See you at Burton again I spose.
#TTAGU
Buy my book These are the good old days: The resurrection of Luton Town in support of Luton Foodbank
