Luton Town Football Club chief executive Gary Sweet has confirmed that the historic news, which all but confirmed a new stadium for the Hatters will not mean a bigger war-chest to do battle with in the January transfer window.
It was confirmed yesterday afternoon that Capital & Regional – the long term major objectors to a the club’s Newlands Park mixed-use scheme, which will help fund their new 17,500-sea home at Power Court – had not appealed a High Court decision to throw out their application for a Judicial Review.
It was the last opportunity for the owners of The Mall shopping centre to try to scupper the plans and now means that 2020 Developments, the property arm of the football club, can press ahead with the finer detail of the plans, which would involve updating the retail, office and housing elements of plans, which were first unveiled in 2016.
It will also mean that Capital & Regional will have to fork out for the costs of applying for the Judicial Review with both the Hatters and Luton Council – whose planning decision the Judicial Review claim was against – both stating that they will go after the retail group to recoup some cash.
Asked if that would mean more money to buy players in the January transfer window, Sweet told BBC Three Counties Radio: “Not really.”
He added: “The cash comes from the same pot because, effectively, it’s the same shareholders.
“What it (the end of C&R’s legal challenge) does do is means that we don’t have to go out to those shareholders and ask for half a million pounds to defend a Judicial Review process that would’ve taken some time and an awful lot of legal bills.
“We’re doing what we can for the January transfer window. We’re fighting desperately but we are obviously battling for players against clubs who have hugely more money than us at this stage.”
But celebrations over Power Court and Newlands Park yesterday were put on hold as Sweet also revealed that his first point of business was to discuss transfer strategy at length.
He said: “Yesterday, upon hearing the news, we celebrated by having a five-hour recruitment meeting with Mick Harford, talking about the January transfer window.”
It’s no secret that Luton have one of the smallest budgets in the Championship and manager Graeme Jones has said he will have to “wheel and deal” in this transfer window to bring in some recruits to help Town in their battle to avoid relegation.
Indeed, Sweet has previously spoken about some of the financial disparity at play in the division.
In his match-day programme notes for the Boxing Day game against Fulham, the chief executive wrote: ‘We operate in a League where clubs are accused of creative accounting, selling their foundation assets to avoid points deductions and alarmingly pandering to agents’ demands whilst still making eye-watering losses to chase the dream of promotion to the Premier League. We operate in a league where the delta between top and bottom is greater than tenfold in budgetary terms and those at the bottom are expected to compete.
‘The same is now happening at every level in the game purely because the balance of wealth is so stark.
‘I do not raise this issue now because we’re languishing towards the bottom of the Championship. I raise it because we are experiencing the chasm in real time between the leagues and because matters are worsening.
‘We, as a board, will not compromise on our own principles of sustainability. This may be the first decade in Luton Town’s post-war history which has seen the Club avoid financial catastrophe at some point having left a decade which very nearly saw our club die twice because our then owners whimsically overspent.
‘As we know only too well, owners can all too easily lose a gamble and flee a sinking ship leaving supporters to pick up the pieces, if indeed there are any left.
‘So, my wish is to shift the current culture of football away from a world where owners/custodians are expected to plough in multi-millions to remain competitive to a more reasonable and prudent world where rules are imposed to protect the longer-term sustainability of clubs and their supporters and communities and for managers and players to battle on a more even playing surface.’
