Luton Town Profile

Luton were a top-flight mainstay in the 1980s and even picked up a League Cup, but financial problems saw them take a spectacular dive out of the Football League. Now they are back in the big time.

Luton Town are a professional football team based in Bedfordshire, and currently play in the Championship, in the second tier of the English football pyramid.

Formed in 1885, the team is nicknamed the Hatters as the town was the centre of the hat manufacturing industry in the UK.

Luton have won one major trophy - the 1988 League Cup - but have also won the 2009 EFL Trophy and the second, third and fourth division titles.

The Hatters were a member of the top tier of English football from the 1982/1983 campaign until 1991/92, when they were relegated just before the Premier League was founded the following season.

Since then Luton went through a period of dramatic decline and financial issues that saw them drop as far as the Conference Premier, which is now the National League.

However, in the last decade they swiftly rose back through the leagues and are now competing for promotion to the Premier League under current manager Rob Edwards.

In May 2023, Luton completed their fairy-tale rise from non-league to Premier League with a dramatic, sudden-death penalty shoot-out victory against Coventry in the Championship play-off final.

Luton early years

Founded in 1885, the club was the first in the south of England to turn professional and joined the Football League in 1897/98.

They left in 1900 due to financial problems, but returned in 1920, working their way up from Division Three to Division Two in 1937/38.

Luton stayed in Division Two until winning promotion to the top flight for the first time in 1955/56, finishing in 10th place.

In 1959, Luton reached their first, and to this date only, FA Cup final when they lost 2-1 to Nottingham Forest at Wembley.

This sparked a swift decline through the leagues, and by 1965/66 Luton had fallen as low as Division Four.

However, after three seasons on the bottom rung of the league ladder they hauled their way back to Division Three after winning the 1967/68 Fourth Division title.

By the 1974/75 season they were back in the top flight, but their stay was brief and they were relegated in 20th position.

Luton's glory years and cup success

Under former player David Pleat, who took the reins in 1978, Luton began to assemble a talented team that would see a return to Division One in 1982/83, after winning the Division Two title the previous season.

With goals coming from Mick Harford, Brian Stein, Paul Walsh and a clutch of talented players such as Ricky Hill, Steve Foster, Mal Donaghy and David Preece. Luton stayed in the top flight for ten seasons.

Although it could have been all over in their first season, after they narrowly escaped relegation when Raddy Antic scored a late winner which made Pleat do his now iconic "jig of joy" across the pitch.

Luton reached an FA Cup semi-final and quarter-final and a respectable mid-table finish under Pleat, before he left to become Tottenham manager in May 1986.

Coach John Moore became the manager and led Luton to a highest top flight finish of seventh in the 1986/87 season, but he resigned at the end of the season because he didn't feel it was the right career for him.

Ray Harford took the reins and led Luton to the semi-finals of the FA Cup and 1988 League Cup final, where goals from Danny Wilson and Brian Stein, as well as a penalty save from keeper Andy Dibble, helped secure a 2-1 win over Arsenal and the Hatters' first major trophy.

Luton reached the League Cup final again in 1989 but were beaten by Nottingham Forest 3-1.

Harford was surprisingly sacked in January 1990 as the club battled relegation, Jim Ryan took over and saved them from the drop and again the following season before he was eventually given the boot.

Luton's rapid decline

Pleat returned for his second spell at the club in June 1991, but was unable to stop Luton getting relegated on the final day of the season - meaning they also missed out on being founding members of the Premier League that started the following season.

They battled relegation from Division One for the next three seasons before finally dropping into the third tier of English football at the end of the 1995/96 campaign, along with rivals Watford. Pleat had left the club for Sheffield Wednesday in the summer but his replacement, Lennie Lawrence was unable to keep them up.

Luton finished third in Division Two under Lawrence the following season, but missed out on promotion via the play-offs, then spent the next three seasons locked in middle-table obscurity.

The 2000/01 season was a disaster for Luton as they finished 22nd of 24 clubs and were relegated to the bottom tier of English football for the first time since the 1967/68 season.

New Luton chairman, Mike Watson-Challis had replaced the unpopular Lawrence with former Luton fans favourite Ricky Hill at the start of the season, but he was sacked in November with the club at the bottom of the table.

Assistant manager Lil Fuccillo stepped up but only lasted until early February when new Director of Football Joe Kinnear made himself manager.

Kinnear engineered a quick return to the Division Two the following season as Luton were promoted ar runners-up of Division Three, five points behind winners Plymouth, with 24 goals coming from Steve Howard.

Howard was top scorer the following two seasons as Luton finished mid-table in Division Two, despite struggling with financial issues and going into administration.

By now Mike Newell had taken up the manager's hot seat, and he steered the club to the newly rebranded League One title in his second season in charge in 2004/05, as new chairman Bill Tomlins guided Luton out of receivership.

Luton finished tenth in their first season back in the second tier of English football, with Howard top scoring for the fifth consecutive season.

Luton collapse

Luton struggled both on and off the pitch in the 2006/07 season. Newell was sacked in March 2007 and Kevin Blackwell took the reins but failed to keep them away from relegation.

Tomlins was forced to resign after the FA discovered illegal payments being made to player agents. It was the beginning of Luton's fall from grace.

In the 2007/08 season the club were deducted ten points after entering administration again in November.

In February 2008, a consortium, headed by TV presenter and Luton fan Nick Owen, stepped in to save the club. Blackwell was sacked and replaced by club legend Mick Harford, but he was unable to stop the club finishing last.

Luton were handed a 30 point deduction at the start of the 2008/09 campaign for irregular transfer dealings and breaking the rule on leaving administration.

Harford remained in charge as the club inevitably finished bottom of the Football League, however he did guide the club to a surprise Football League Trophy after beating Scunthorpe 3-2 at Wembley.

Despite several promotion near misses, Luton remained stuck in the Conference for the next five seasons, until finally returning to the Football League at the end of the 2013/14 season under manager John Still.

Luton progress under Nathan Jones

The Hatters just missed out of the play-offs in the 2014/15 season, despite spending most of the campaign in the automatic promotion slots.

Still was sacked in the December of the following campaign with the club in 17th place, and eventually replaced by young manager Nathan Jones who won 11 of his 21 matches to lift the club away from relegation and into 11th place.

Jones made big changes to the squad for the 2016/17 season and the club finished fourth and reached the semi-finals of the EFL Trophy. But missed out on promotion after losing to Blackpool in the play-off semi-final.

Luton won promotion back to League One after a 10-year absence the following campaign after finishing second in the table.

Jones was becoming hot property in the managerial world and continued his success with Luton in their first season back in League One in 2018/19, as he steered them into second place by January 2019.

Stoke City eventually pounced on Jones leaving caretaker Mick Harford to once again step into the breach and complete the job of successive promotions as they became champions in May.

Graeme Jones was announced as the new Luton manager but struggled in his first season in charge and left the club in April 2020 with the Hatters in the Championship relegation zone.

A remorseful Nathan Jones, who had been sacked by Stoke, returned to Kenilworth Road and with the season delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic successfully helped Luton avoid relegation on the final day of the season.

Jones then guided Luton to 12th place in the 2020/21 season, and then followed that up with a 6th-placed finish in 2021/22. Although they lost to Huddersfield in the play-off semi-finals.

But Jones left Luton in the lurch again in November 2022, to join Premier League Southampton - a job that lasted just 14 games.

Rather ironically the recently sacked manager of Watford, Rob Edwards, took up the Luton manager's role a week later.

Luton back in the big time

Edwards steered Luton to a third place finish in the Championship, 11 points adrift of second-placed Sheffield United.

They faced a play-off semi-final with Sunderland and overcame a 2-1 first-leg deficit to progress 3-2 on aggregate amid joyous scenes at Kenilworth Road.

Then just nine years on from ending their five-season stretch in the Conference Premier, the Hatters celebrated their return to the top-flight for the first time since 1992 with victory in the play-off final against Coventry.

Previous point deductions and disappointments were left in the rear-view mirror at Wembley, where Jordan Clark's opener was cancelled out by Coventry favourite Gustavo Hamer.

The match finished 1-1 after extra-time and Fankaty Dabo's penalty miss meant a famous 6-5 sudden-death shoot-out victory for jubilant Luton.

Luton's rivals

Luton's biggest local rivals are Watford, with the two clubs separated by just 19 miles. They regularly met between 1900 and 1937, but Luton were then in a higher division than Watford through to 1963.

In the 1960s and '70s, the matches were often quite violent, with one particular game in 1969 seeing three red cards shown to ill-tempered players.

Due to the two sides' varying fortunes, the rivalry is played out irregularly. It did resume in the 2020/21 Championship season, with both sides winning their home fixture 1-0.

Watford have finished higher than Luton on the league ladder every season since 1997, apart from the 2022/23 season.

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