Luton boss Jack Wilshere has brushed off a reported approach from Leicester City, saying there was “never any chance” he was going to leave the Hatters.
Earlier in the summer, a report emerged that the Foxes wanted the 35-year-old as the next man in their hotseat, but that he wanted to remain at the club that gave him his big break into management.
Wilshere took charge of the Hatters in October and eventually guided them to a Vertu Trophy final triumph and an unbeaten 11-game finish to League One, where they came agonisingly close to reaching the play-offs, but missed out by one point, thanks to a late winner for Stevenage against Wigan on the final day.
Leicester have since appointed former Southampton boss Russell Martin as their new manager for their first season in League One for 15 years, after they replaced the Hatters as the last team to get relegated out of the top flight to the third tier in consecutive campaigns.
Asked if the 2016 Premier League champions made an approach for him in the summer, Wilshere said: “I don’t think it’d be fair for me to comment on that, number one, because how happy I am here and how grateful I am to everyone here, especially the board, and Gary [Sweet – CEO] and Moons [operations director James Mooney], for giving me that opportunity when no one did.
“My focus is completely here and it always has been. I loved last season so much. There was never any chance that I was going to step away from what we’ve created here, and that’s because I’m excited about what we built here and what we can build.
“But also how grateful I am to everyone for that opportunity.”
All contracted Luton players reported back for pre-season training yesterday, but to highlight his commitment, Wilshere revealed that his preparations have carried over from last term, with just a short break in between.
“This summer, I had a week away. I went to Cyprus with my family, and actually, a few days in New York with my wife, but apart from that, I’ve been here [The Brache] every day,” he said.
“And that’s not me saying, ‘oh, look, I’ve been working really hard’. It’s just because of how committed I am, and how much potential there is here.
“We started to see that towards the end of last season and the most important thing for me is that we start [this season] in the same way
“The only way you do that is by trying to improve things. While we didn’t have the players in, trying to improve them on the pitch, we’ve made big steps in there [The Brache].
“We changed the canteen, which is small things, but the players come back and they start to feel, OK, now it’s starting to feel a little bit different, and you want them to feel that way.
“I love my time [here] and I love being here every single day. I love the staff, I love the coaches and, yeah, I want to be successful here.
“That’s why I talk about being grateful to everyone and the people above me, because, first of all, they gave me the opportunity.
“Then they said to me pretty early that, ‘OK, this is yours, this is your training ground. You make the improvements with the squad’.
“We changed the canteen, we changed the gym, and that was me asking, but people saying, ‘yeah, let’s do it. Let’s change the feel’. And it might seem like small little things, but they make a big difference.
“I spoke about when I first came in here, about how I felt like the players and the staff, to be fair, needed a direction, needed an identity.
“Good people, but we just needed something to hold onto. And there were some tough times and I always, always felt like every single person in there was with me.
“Then in the summer when you ask a few different things and people just say, ‘yeah, let’s do it. You can do that, you can do this’. It makes you feel like you belong somewhere.”
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