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Luton Town and Yeovil Town have two things in common of great significance. The first is their nickname. Just as the Glovers got their name from the glove-making industry in the town, so Luton got their nickname from the hat-making industry. Secondly, the modern day club was formed from a merger - Luton Wanderers and Luton Excelsior - in 1885. Nine years later they became founder members of the Southern League, and the first professional club in Southern England.
They had a brief three year membership of the Football League between 1897 and 1900, before resigning and rejoining the Southern League. When the Southern League top division became part of Football League Division Three at the end of World War I, Luton moved back into the fold, where they have remained ever since.
The club have spent most of their history between the second and third tiers of English football, with three key exceptions. In 1954-55 they gained promotion to the First Division where they spent five seasons, reaching their peak in 1959 when they got into the FA Cup Final, losing to Nottingham Forest.
What happened thereafter was spectacular - Luton went from the First Division and Wembley Stadium in 1959, to 17th in Division Four in the 1966-67 and this represents their lowpoint since joining the Football League. Other than a single-season blip in 2000-01, this is the only time that Luton have been in the fourth tier of English football, giving a strong idea of how low their ebb currently is.
Luton's finest era came in the mid-1980s, when promotion back to the top tier was gained, albeit with controversy surrounding both their plastic pitch and their away fan ban after a riot involving Millwall fans - something that saw them expelled from the League Cup in 1986-87 after refusing to allow Cardiff City fans to buy tickets for a semi-final match.
They reached their league peak in 1986-87 as well. Was that achieved under David Pleat, who went on to manage Tottenham Hotspur? Or perhaps the highly respected Ray Harford? No, in fact it was achieved by the far more anonymous John Moore - a first team coach who held the reins when Pleat disappeared to Spurs. Harford came in for Moore and the success continued, with the League Cup being won 3-2 against Arsenal at Wembley.
The plastic pitch got ripped up in 1991 and perhaps not by coincidence, this signalled Luton's decline again and they were relegated the following season, despite Pleat having returned to Bedfordshire. Thereafter things have gone from bad to worse, with financial woes turning Luton into a selling club as they attempt to move away from the crumbling wreck that is Kenilworth.
They've gone into administration three times now, with the first coming when plans for a multi-purpose sports complex dubbed the 'KohlerDome' collapsed. They were pulled out of administration on the eve of the 1999-2000 season, but the damage off the field saw them relegated back to the fourth tier at the end of 2000-01. Former Wimbledon manager Joe Kinnear and Mick Harford masterminded an instant promotion, but financial woes and meddling from Chairmen were to see Luton come off the rails once again.
This takes us on to the time when the Glovers played Luton in the League Cup, just after we'd entered the Football League. John Gurney was the Luton Chairman, taking over the club in May 2003, and if you recall, one of first things he did was to sack Kinnear and Harford and to set up a phone vote to let the fans decide whether Kinnear should be reappointed or whether Mike Newell should come in as the next manager.
Yep, you heard right, a phone vote. Luton fans were given the opportunity to place their votes in a Stars-In-Their-Eyes
style phone-in, where you could dial a different number for a different manager, that
way you'd be certain that the new man had the full backing of the supporters. That's the theory anyway. In practice the slight flaw in Gurney's thinking was that
the phone-vote was open to all, meaning that even hated rivals Watford could have their
supporters register their vote to ... errr, influence ... what sort of manager they felt
they would prefer their dearly despised neighbours to have.
So would you prefer former Wimbledon veteran Joe Kinnear, a highly respected manager with
an excellent track record, who had only just guided Luton into a healthy 9th place
finish in Division Two (third tier)? Or would you prefer Mike Newell, a former Luton
Town player who as a manager had
managed one of the greatest "snatch defeat from the jaws of victory" achievements of the 2002-03
season when he took over a Hartlepool United side steaming away at the top of the Third Division, only to hand the title to Rushden by May. Newell had 'celebrated' promotion with Hartlepool
by seeing his crumbling side lose 4-0, hear chants for his head ringing around the ground, and
by collecting his P45 shortly afterwards. You would think that Kinnear would have won the vote by a country mile, but in this case
the Watford Luton fans cast their vote towards Mike Newell, and so the former Doncaster
Rovers player came into the club over the summer of 2003.
With John Gurney seemingly on a suicide
mission, the (Mad) Hatters spiralled into administration. Normally a club going into administration
is bad news, but Luton fans saw this as a lifesaver as it meant that Gurney was forced out and
an Administrator, Barry Ward, was appointed to untangle the mess that Gurney had left
behind. It later transpired that Luton's Supporters Trust - Trust In Luton - had rather cunningly acquired shares in the club's major creditors, Hatters Holdings, and in doing so had deliberately forced the club into administration to get rid of Gurney. Rather clever if you can do that without tipping the club over the precipice in the process. Mick Harford was reappointed as Director of Football as the fans got back the man they wanted probably in the first place.
To be fair to Newell, he did surprisingly well, even if some of his remarks made to the press at times would cause controversy, and in the end be the spark that damaged Luton even further. Newell got Luton up as League One (tier three) Champions and for 18 months all looked to be rosey, until Luton began to slide down towards the foot of the Championship.
Probably more damning was Newell's public outbursts. Whilst some about female linesmen merely involved a quick slap on the wrists at Soho Square, some were making back page headlines, including his claim that agent bungs were rife in football and his claims that he had personally been offered bungs to help transfers go through.
In March 2007, Newell personally wrote to his own board of directors demanding to know the answer to certain questions, including the exact financial breakdown of the sale of five of his first team players. He also told journalists after a match against Hull City that they should be conducting an investigation into the financial dealings at Kenilworth Road. Two days later, Newell was fired by two directors for "gross misconduct" for speaking out against his employers - something that Newell is currently conducting his own legal action against for unfair dismissal, particularly given how events have transpired. The decision to sack Newell, saw one director - Martin King - walk, claiming that he shared Newell's concerns and disagreed with the decision.
A month later, Chairman Bill Tomlins was forced to resign when the FA announced they were investigating irregular payments made by Luton's parent company J10, which he also resigned from, and Tomlin admitted that these payments related to money handed over to incoming players' agents. Various parties, including the six agents involved (including our friend Steven Denos), have since been hit with a total of over 50 charges by the FA. Luton have been charged with 17 of them, all of which they have denied, and the investigation is currently ongoing, with Newell doubtless very keen to see the outcome, given that any 'guilty' verdict would no doubt vindicate his decision to act as whistleblower on what he believed to be going on.
Further financial woes and the threat of Newell's legal action against his dismissal have seen Luton fall into administration a third time, and for two more directors - John Mitchell and Richard Bagehot - to resign, pending charges aimed at them by the FA as part of the 'agent bung' investigations. The falling into administration has resulted in a 10 point deduction and if the FA investigations are completed during this season, then anything that goes against them could see that punishment added to. Given their current league position, almost anything on top of what they already have would see them relegated.
Despite that, manager Kevin Blackwell has held things together pretty well, and without that 10 point deduction, Luton would be safe in mid-table and with a strong home record to go with it. Thus for all of what is going on off the field, it is worth remembering that Luton do still have a football team (for the moment!) and not a bad one. Perhaps Russell Slade should be taking a leaf out of Leeds United's book and showing his players a copy of the league table without Luton's deduction, to remind his players that they will not be playing a basement side on New Year's Day.
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