Luton will continue to manage the workload of Marvelous Nakamba as boss Rob Edwards has admitted that three games a week of high-intensity pressing are currently too much for the midfielder.
Tonight’s showdown with Championship leaders Sunderland is Town’s second game in five days, with a trip to Coventry to come on Saturday.
Nakamba suffered a serious knee injury in December and had to have an operation to repair a torn meniscus, which meant he missed the second half of the Premier League season.
Nakamba returned to action in August but has only made six appearances for the Hatters this season, and he started on the substitutes’ bench in Saturday’s 3-0 derby rout of bitter rivals Watford.
But with four in-game injuries against the Hornets, the Zimbabwean was sent on to replace Tahith Chong and he helped expertly snuff out a small amount of momentum that Luton’s neighbours managed in the second half.
Explaining his approach, boss Edwards said: “There’s a couple of sides to that. He’s been away (with the Zimbabwe national side). So he got back on the early hours of the Thursday morning. So, he’d been travelling a lot, not slept very well.
“And then to put him straight into a game like that, we didn’t feel was the right thing. But I think it will always be the case with Marv now that we that we have to manage that. That’s fine. He understands things as well, so that’s not a problem.
“When you’ve got someone like that who can come on when you 2-0 up in a big, big game and then give you some solidity, I think that’s great.
“Clearly, the way we want to play is with incredible intensity and, really, our biggest asset, in this league, and in many aspects it was last year, it gave us a real platform, is the way we press.
“The way we want to try to counter press and regain the ball, it’s not necessarily going to be having control with loads of build up. It’s going to be playing in the right area.
“And I think the game tilt and where the game was the other day was in their (Watford) final third. Even if they had the ball, it was them and then us pressing and winning it back. That’s where we want the game.
“To ask Marv to do that three times a week for 90 minutes is probably asking too much now. So, we just have to manage that.”
Asked if that was down to the severity of Nakamba’s knee injury, Edwards said: “I think, if you scan every player now, there’s always going to be bits wrong with everybody, but the impact that goes through the joints, just from jogging around, there’s quite a lot.
“So we just got to make sure at the moment we’re managing the impact and how much time he’s on his feet.
“I think, as the months go by, and we keep him right, and he builds up more and more strength and resilience to it, then hopefully we can continue to ask more from him.
“But what we don’t want to do is set him back a long, long time either, so we’ve just got to make sure that, that we get that right.
“Thankfully, at the moment, and I know we’re missing Shandon (Baptiste) and Walshie’s (Liam Walsh) suspended, there’s still some some good options in those positions.”
