From one winter to the next, Luton Town have been in the grip of an injury crisis. It’s perhaps impossible to quantify the impact that these problems alone have had. For one, there will always be a lingering question of whether they might have survived in the Premier League with a full complement of Hatters. But now the fear is focused on the Championship trap door, as back-to-back relegations would be disastrous.
Eleven consecutive away defeats are, of course, a more immediate and compelling reason for second tier struggles that have left them languishing second from bottom with a matching record for conceding goals (47) and the most number of defeats in the division, 16 from 28 games.
It speaks to a leaking backline, which in its defence, has rarely been settled since injuries began to snowball from December 2023. That was in addition to the trauma of Tom Lockyer’s cardiac arrest on the pitch at Bournemouth, against which any game of football pales into insignificance. Thankfully, he was saved. But on the comeback trail, he too got injured.
Back-to-back victories followed that troubling day and fans dared to dream that Luton’s history-making first foray among England’s elite might not be as fleeting as many predicted before that season, though it was always going to be a long shot.
A promising survival bid was mounting as 2023 turned to 2024 and a sense that, after a baptism of fire, Town were getting to grips with the Premier League. Then hamstrings twanged and knees buckled with alarming frequency, among a tidal wave of ailments that ruled out key members of Luton’s squad.
And, after an exhilarating 4-0 win over Brighton on January 30 last year, Town won just once more all season. Injuries weren’t the only factor, but Premier League relegation was the end result.
And the fallout is still being felt, with the situation again contributing to their current precarious position in the Championship and the removal of manager Edwards earlier this month.
The spectre of consecutive relegations now looms large for his replacement Matt Bloomfield, as do the injury issues the new manager has inherited.
Last season, more than half of Town’s 25-man squad were sidelined for at least one month or more, while six suffered season-ending injuries and five of those were defenders.
Defender Dan Potts missed the entirety of the Premier League season, while Gabriel Osho missed the start and then one-and-a-half months between March and April, though he’s since left for French side Auxerre, so neither have been part of this season’s struggles.
Nor has Sambi Lokonga who was exceptional in his temporary Premier League stay, but the Belgian suffered two separate injuries that kept him out for around three-and-a-half months in total, while Andros Townsend, Chiedozie Ogbene and Luke Berry have also departed having been sidelined at various stages last term. Amari’i Bell, Jordan Clark and Cauley Woodrow remain but all spent time in the treatment room too.
More significant absentees were Jacob Brown and Marvelous Nakamba who both had knee surgery after training ground incidents that Edwards said were “innocuous” and it was a month-and-a-half into the current Championship season before they were both in a match day squad together again.
By then, the injury hangover from one campaign to the next had already been laid bare on the team sheet for Luton’s opening night 4-1 defeat at home to Burnley, who had finished below them in the top-flight. With Bell on the bench, but clearly unfit to play, former boss Edwards fielded an inexperienced back three of Reuell Walters, Joe Johnson – both teenagers at the time – and Teden Mengi. Together, they had a combined age of 59.
By October, Edwards admitted the injury issues were “incredibly challenging”. In December, Mengi went under the knife, and he revealed on his Instagram account that he had not taken surgery advice, having suffered an in injury against Fulham in the final game of the Premier League campaign. Edwards then admitted that players can’t be forced to have operations.
Less than a fortnight later, and 12 months on from that distressing day at Bournemouth, Lockyer had navigated a long recovery process and was days away from making a remarkable comeback for the development side. He injured his ankle in training, requiring a corrective operation. Both defenders are expected to be out of action until towards the end of this season.
Still in the building – as is the common parlance these days – is centre half Mads Andersen, but he has made just 11 league appearances since signing in the summer of 2024, such has been his unlucky time on the treatment table.
Fellow defender Reece Burke – arguably one of Town’s best defenders when fit – has had a frustratingly persistent injury record, as has midfielder Shandon Baptiste, who was signed in the summer from Brentford after an injury-hit spell. Both have been absent since late November and have managed just 22 appearances combined.
Liam Walsh, signed in the summer, also with a history of injury problems, has managed just 13 appearances due to a combination of two red card suspensions for a total of seven matches either side of an injury lay-off.
Walters, a new recruit this term, suffered a broken foot in October that was not immediately detected and he played on for a month until he couldn’t through pain. Now 20 years old, the former Arsenal right back has made four appearances after almost three months out, but has not yet featured under Bloomfield. Nor has Lamine Fanne who suffered an ankle injury after just two appearances.
Tahith Chong is a relatively a new addition to the injury list (hamstring), but perhaps most keenly felt was the absence of Alfie Doughty, who thankfully made his return on Tuesday night’s 3-2 defeat at Oxford after two-and-a-half months out with an ankle injury.
At the point that he damaged his ligaments against Cardiff – where he opted to play on for the last few minutes, hobbling round the pitch because Luton had used all of the substitutions – the 25-year-old was the leading chance creator in the Championship. Town have bagged just 13 goals in 14 league games in the time he’s not been on the pitch and they now sit in the Championship relegation zone.
It’s clear that the impact of injuries, overall, has been significant to Luton’s fortunes, but chief executive Gary Sweet and new manager Matt Bloomfield have shed some light on the root causes of the crisis and what the club is doing to tackle the issue.
Soft grounds, big problems
While unveiling the new boss, Sweet, reflecting on the origins of the problem, pointed to the club’s training ground pitch as a contributing factor.
“It’s something that we’ve been concerned about for some time,” he said of the injury problems, adding: “It is something that’s happening across football a little bit. The soft tissue injuries are on the increase. Quite a lot.
“We put it down to a number of things. One of the things that we had last year was soft pitches on the training ground, and we put in a one-and-a-half million pound pitch at the training ground, with proper drainage and a hybrid surface.
“So there’s a lot that we’re doing to correct that. And, and there are other clubs that have seen similar kind of issues because of the amount of rainfall that we had last year.”
Adverse conditions created a frustrating backdrop and Sweet said: “It’s really difficult to train without actually walking across the pitch and getting soaking wet socks – and that’s just me.”
While the improvements to their training base represent an important step forward, the injuries have persisted and the chief executive acknowledged the lingering challenges.
“We’re just seeing the same level of injuries at the moment. We’re hoping we can improve that, hitting the ground running next year where we’ve probably got a cleaner bill of health, because we started the season with three or four players out from the previous season, that was a difficult start,” he said.
Medical team
Reflecting on when injuries began mounting, at the back end of 2023, Sweet said: “I think the situation we had in December created a little bit of anxiety in the medical team.
“We took the opportunity towards the end of last season to restructure the medical team, and really complete that process in the summer. We’ve got a really good medical team here, but when you put something in place, then it’s a little bit like when you make some changes in the academy – it sometimes might take even a generation to happen.
“This is a good process where it’s a slow-burning improvement. So, over a period of a season we will see an improvement. We’re not quite there. We are actually seeing a number of improvements. For example, at the moment when we get an injury, the period of absence is much shorter than they used to be. So, actually there are areas of improvement.”
Sweet added: “We’ve changed a lot of people in the medical team. That’s not necessarily saying that those that have moved out or changed roles weren’t doing the job properly when we became a Premier League football club.
“So, that gave us an opportunity to elevate a number of areas in the individual club, whether that be in terms of facilities or personnel. So we did that across the board generally, but with medical, we made a real big difference with the number of physios and therapists that we had, not just the number, but in terms of their experiences and what they could bring. And that’s working pretty well.”
Bloomfield’s pragmatic approach
New manager Bloomfield has been in position for just over a week and he’s inherited some of the injury problems, as well as perhaps some of the residual effects.
“It’s something I knew coming in, and something I’ve been made even more aware of since working in the building and realising some of the injuries are longer term and they’re not going to be with us for a little while,” he said after his switch from League One high-flyers Wycombe Wanderers.
“From my awareness, there’s been lots of mitigating circumstances and factors towards that. It’s not easy as a football club to have five and six big players unavailable. Of course, that doesn’t help with results, and I feel for Rob (Edwards) with the time that he’s had with missing big players. Absolutely.
“There have been some big players missing for big periods of time. And that’s not ideal or helpful, to be a winning football club or a winning team, to miss some of your bigger-name players, which I absolutely understand.
“But we’ve also got some real good players in the squad that we’re working with, so we’re really pleased with that. But we’ll have to look at the training programme. We’ll look at the game schedule, we’ll look at the weekly schedule, how that’s made up and what the boys do on a day-to-day basis.”
Adjusting for the future
While on the pitch, Bloomfield’s early alterations have made an impact – though without securing a first win of his tenure – off-the-field, the 40-year-old is committed to making measured changes, working closely with the club’s medical staff to find the best solutions.
“I’m not here to try and rip everything apart of what the guys have been doing. I think the medical and the sports science team are fantastic. The interactions we’ve had so far, I think they’re very knowledgeable and they really care about their jobs,” he said.
“In football there’s usually lots of things that go into the melting pot, and it’s not just one contributing factor. So we’ll try and work the way we want to work. We’ll keep their ideas on board and we’ll come up with what we believe will be the right formula for the group.”
However, Bloomfield is aware of the constraints of the current fixture schedule limiting opportunities for substantial changes.
“I think it’d be naive of us to go after too many physical differences in the next week or two, because we’ve got a midweek game next week, et cetera, so your schedule is dictated to you,” he said prior to his debut against Preston last Saturday.
“But once we get through that period, we’ll be looking to work the way we want to work. And if we need to adjust things slightly with their help and support, we’ll be doing that.”
Keeping injured players in the loop
While Bloomfield’s initial focus has been getting to know his available players and preparing for a busy three-game week to start his tenure, the Hatters who have been sidelined for longer, like Burke, Baptiste, Mengi and Lockyer, have been included as much as possible.
The manager said: “They’ve been in every team meeting because I think it’s really important that we keep those boys engaged. There’ll be some situations where injured players don’t join the meetings, but in the first instance of why we’re in the building, I think it’s really important that those boys understand who I am, who we are as a group of staff, what we’re going after on the pitch.
“So whilst they’re engaged when they’re injured, we feel like – and we’ve done it at previous clubs – when they return from injury, they’ll always already have a base knowledge of what they’re going after when they come back.
Hope amid the struggles
Despite the difficulties, Sweet remains optimistic about the long-term improvements being made, though admits that, as a Luton fan himself, he wonders often whether the club could have survived in the Premier Leaguer without the injury crisis that engulfed them.
But he said: “You can’t look back too much. You’ve got to look forward. You look back to assess where we might have made errors, maybe made mistakes or had bad luck or had situations such as the pitches or whatever it was that contributed to those injuries and correct that situation, which we’ve done.”
As Luton battle to avoid another relegation, the road to recovery appears long for some, but with the return of Doughty this week, and news that Andersen is available and Fanne is not far behind, there is hope that the tide will start to turn – and, hopefully, the results.
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