Edwards is desperate for the Hatters not to give up their Premier League status

Giving up a place in the Premier League is something that Luton boss Rob Edwards and his players are desperate to ensure doesn’t happen this season.

The Hatters head into their final five games of the campaign still in with a huge chance of remaining a top flight club, just a point behind Nottingham Forest and two away from Everton. Town could move out of the bottom three with a victory over Brentford this afternoon, as the Reds don’t play until tomorrow when they head to Goodison Park to take on the Toffees in a relegation six-pointer.

Edwards, who retired from playing in 2013, has worked his way to having a first crack at this level, after roles with FA, where he coached England’s youth sides, plus being in charge of the U18s at Wolves, also being in the dug-out at AFC Telford, Forest Green Rovers and Watford briefly. He then moved to Kenilworth Road in November 2022, where he masterminded promotion via the Championship play-offs last term.

A number of Edwards’ squad have had their own battles to reach this level as well, players like Jordan Clark and Luke Berry having scored in all five tiers of English football now, while Carlton Morris had loan spells in Scotland and Reece Burke dropped into League One at one stage as well. With that in mind, they are desperate to carry on their journey in the top flight, as Edwards said: “I’ve loved it, I’m loving it, I love the pressure of it, the challenge of it. It’s brilliant and it’s where we all want to be, the lads included and that’s why we don’t want to give it up.

“We’ve all worked really, really hard for a number of years to get here. Some of our players have worked their whole footballing careers, 10, 11 years of playing professionally to get here, they don’t want to give it up and I’m the same. I’ve been coaching for 11 years, it’s taken me 11 years since I’ve retired to get to this point, I’ve worked really hard, I have.

"I’ve had a number of different jobs and I love it. I love this challenge and none of us want to give it up easily, so we’ll throw everything at it to make sure we’re here next season. We don't want it to end for us in terms of our Premier League status. We need to act now and along with performances pick up results. We know we’ve got to win some football matches, but how many that is we don’t know.”

Edwards also feels a similar sense of responsibility to the club’s hierarchy and fanbase that he did during his attempts to reach the Premier League last season, which he managed to do by delivering a day at Wembley that no-one who was present will ever forget, a penalty shoot-out success over Coventry City. He continued: “I felt the heat last year, I felt the pressure, it’s the same thing, I didn’t want to let people down. I don’t want to let people down, I don’t want to let our supporters down, I don’t want to let our board down who have been so supportive of me, they gave me that opportunity.

"My staff, all the wider club staff and everyone who’s connected to the club. I feel that, I take that on board, so I do feel what I felt that last year and we were then able to deal with the the most stressful moment ever, penalties in a Championship play-off final and we came out on the right end. So I’m really hopeful that experience can put us in good stead going into these games, as I feel that responsibility. We’ve had a lot of special games that a lot of our supporters can remember for a long, long time, but hopefully we stay in this league, so we can give them a lot more as well.”