Luton’s injury woes continued as Rob Edwards was left to rue Teden Mengi’s early departure in the 3-1 pre-season defeat to Celta Vigo, but the manager said the club is working hard to sign some reinforcements.
Town’s already threadbare defence suffered another blow just 13 minutes into their final preparation game ahead of the Championship curtain-raiser at home to Burnley on August 12.
Mengi limped off and the Hatters will be sweating on the prognosis as they already have Amari’i Bell, Reece Burke and Mads Andersen out injured, none of which have played any of the pre-season games, while Daiki Hashioka suffered an injury in the friendly against Rukh Lviv.
“The big disappointment is obviously Teden, but I don’t know at the moment. It’s his knee,” said Edwards.
The defender was able to walk off the pitch and Edwards said: “That’s a positive. We’ll probably scan him tomorrow and we’ll see.”
It left Luton with a backline of Tom Holmes, Reuell Walters and Joe Johnson, with none of the senior long-term injured defenders expected to return for the league opener against Burnley.
Edwards said: “Amari’i is getting close. He won’t be right for next week, but he’s getting close. He’s been on the grass and he’s trained with us these last few days which is great.
“Mads, he’s probably a few days ahead of Burkey, so those two are probably a few weeks behind Amari’i, and obviously, we’re trying to recruit as well.
“Trust me, we’re stepping on it. We’re trying very hard but, obviously, like every transfer there’s always lots of parties involved at it’s not straightforward.
“We’ve got to stay true to what we do as well. We have tried hard and we are working on things hard but people have got to want to come to this football club, to join Luton.
“I don’t like using the word project, you hear that one all the time, but coming in to be a part of what we want to do. And that’s important.
“We’re working very, very hard and we know we’ve got to try and add a few more bodies and we need to get some back from the treatment room. That’s clear but we are working really hard on it.
“I’m happy with the core group and I see lots of good things in the games, in every one, take away the one against Goztepe in Slovenia.
“So, the performances have been good. The obvious bit now is just a few key reinforcements.”
Two late goals from Pablo Duran and Iago Aspas put a deceptive scoreline on the friendly with Celta Vigo.
Williot Swedberg put the Spaniards infront at half time, but Town were the better side in the second period and deservedly equalised with Alfie Doughty converted a glorious cross from new midfielder Shannon Baptiste.
A mistake from Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu gifted the ball to Duran, although the forward still had a lot to do to score, but his sublime first touch and instinctive shot on the swivel was too good for Thomas Kaminski in Luton’s goal. The Belgian could also do very little to keep out a close range diving header from former Liverpool man Aspas.
Edwards said: “We made a couple of errors. I’m not going to look at that too much, and dwell on it too much. We’ve obviously got to make sure we talk about it so we don’t do that again, but overall it was a really good performance against a really good team.”
