Chief executive Gary Sweet has said Luton still plan to be as “aggressive” as possible in the remaining weeks of the transfer window, after confirming Matt Bloomfield as their new manager.
The Hatters parted ways with former boss Rob Edwards last week, but in the intervening period still signed Isiah Jones from Middlesbrough, though the new boss has admitted his delight at that acquisition.
Edwards’ last signing saw Christ Makosso join from the Belgian second tier side Molenbeek and the former boss was able to hand a debut to Lamine Fanne at QPR, who Luton signed in the summer, but loaned back to Swedish outfit AIK until the end of their season in November.
Also while still manageress last week, the Hatters also sold forward Joe Taylor to Huddersfield for a fee understood to be around £3million, though officially undisclosed.
There are 18 days left of the transfer window, and Town plan to be active, though there’s an acceptance that this period is tougher than summer, when trying to sign players.
“We absolutely intend to have a successful January,” said CEO Sweet, adding: “You’ve got to be careful in January. By and large, most of the players are players that other clubs don’t want, whereas it’s different to the summer, so you’ve got to be really careful.
“We’ve done pretty well by not really cutting too deep. So I think that’s a conscious concern. We do absolutely feel the need that we need to freshen the squad a little bit.
“How deep we go depends upon opportunity and see what comes available, because if more than a player that we’re maybe targeting comes available, we’ll go for it. We’ll do it.
“We’re going to be quite aggressive, if we can, but that’s a matter of if we can.
“Actually, we’ve had a pretty busy window so far. We’ve also got to consider, whilst they’re not new transfers in, we’ve got new players available to us. The likes of Mads (Andersen), who are now injury-free and can be selected so, actually already, from a Luton fan’s perspective, I think we’ve got some fresh legs in the team already.”
Bloomfield stopped short of saying he’ll plunder his goalscoring Wycombe side for players, admitting he hasn’t considered it, but on the transfer window as a whole, he said: “I think it’s really important.
“The thing I’ve been really encouraged by is the team element of the recruitment, Mick (Harford), Chappie (Phil Chapple) and the two guys who do the recruitment as well, Yousuf (Sajjad) and Jay (Socik). So there’s plans in place already.
“They’ve been working extremely hard, but I love that I’m a part of that process. I love that we’re working on that together. We’ll come to a decision as a group and we’ll move forward with it. And that team ethics is really exciting.
“We’ve got a short period of time, we’ll have to assess very, very quickly, see if there’s anything available to us, but, first and foremost, the group that we have has to take my absolute focus.
“We’ve got some extremely good footballers here and we’re really pleased to have them.”
That latest new addition is Jones, who made his debut in Saturday’s FA Cup third round defeat at Premier League Nottingham Forest.
Sweet explained: “I think we’re delighted to get Isaiah in the window. One of the things that is interesting, we were actually doing the deal for Isaiah just as we started to discuss (managerial) matters.
“If we look at our team right now, what it needs is pace on the width, so we decided to take that decision, without a full check from our future gaffer, coming in.
“Thankfully, we made the right choice.”
Bloomfield said: “He’s a player that I’m very pleased to have here.
“I think he’s a fantastic player. If you look at the team that we’ve been playing with at Wycombe this year, we’ve had a lot of pace out wide.
“So (he’s) someone who’s able to go and do that for us, seeing him in training this morning, he’s a proper player.
“So yeah, really pleased to have him.”
Be the first to comment