Simon Sluga was sold to Ludogorets to avoid the risk of losing the goalkeeper for nothing in the summer and because Luton “wanted to move in a different direction,” manager Nathan Jones has said.
Though the fee was reported as undisclosed in England, a Twitter post from the Bulgarian journalist who broke the story yesterday, Metodi Shumanov, said that Luton recouped around €500,000 from the record transfer fee of €1.5million (around £1.3million at the time) that they splashed out on the Croatian in summer 2019.
Sluga was in the final six months of his contract and although Town had an option to extend his deal, it’s understood that he’d yet to trigger that with the required number of starts.
Sluga had not featured in the last two months after going on international duty and having to self-isolate after being a close contact of a team-mate that tested positive for Covid-19.
That meant that James Shea took the gloves and he’s excelled between the sticks ever since, keeping five clean sheets in ten games and losing just once in all competitions.
With no guarantees Sluga would regain his place, or whether to take up the contract option, a deal was reached with the Bulgarian champions yesterday on transfer deadline day.
Boss Jones said: “We had a decision to make with Simon whether we took an option up or we retained his value in this window, and we felt that we wanted to move in a different direction and believed the best way of doing that and protecting his value at the club was to let him go in this window.”
Town moved quickly to replace Sluga with Aston Villa’s Jed Steer on loan until the end of the season, but Jones – fulfilling his promise at the weekend of a clearer explanation after the transfer deadline – praised Sluga, telling the club’s website: “We obviously had an offer which the board accepted, so we’d like to thank Simon because I know he had a difficult start, as any player from another country would, adjusting to a life, different culture and style of football.
“Since I’ve come in he’s been excellent, his attitude, his demeanour. He has been part of a real progressive team and we thank him and wish him all the best. At times if he hasn’t had the best of games, he responded well and has been a big part of the goalkeeping department, so we would like to wish him well.”
Speaking about Steer, Jones said: “We would have loved to get a permanent keeper that could have been ours and that we could have developed, but that wasn’t possible.
“We needed to take a real experienced, safe pair of hands that we knew that would fit into the environment, and also be good enough to give us a real push until the end of the season.
“Jed ticks all those boxes and I know all about him, I played with him, Breezy and Henri did as well, so we know he is a really good human being.
“He’s played a number of games at good levels and good productive loans, then the highlight when he got promoted with Aston Villa.
“We believe we have brought in someone yes for the short term, but we believe in the interim, this is a really good decision for the club.”
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