{"id":8885,"date":"2023-12-04T18:22:22","date_gmt":"2023-12-04T18:22:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8885"},"modified":"2023-12-06T08:25:53","modified_gmt":"2023-12-06T08:25:53","slug":"no-time-for-cock-ups-at-the-keny","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/?p=8885","title":{"rendered":"No time for cock-ups at the Keny"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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And so rapidly to Kenilworth Road, Luton, for a Tuesday evening game under the lights. We shall be looking to avoid back-to-back defeats there for the first time since 1958 and searching for our first win at ‘the Keny’ after six draws and four defeats since February 1986. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The two teams last met in the BPE (Before the Premiership Era). On Boxing Day 1991, Mick Harford, Luton’s sometime manager and now chief recruitment officer, beat David Seaman 10 mins from time to give the hosts, then at the foot of the old 22-club First Division, a 1-0 win. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Luton would clamber to the giddy heights of 20th but come up two points short of securing a place in the inaugural Premier League the following season. Thus, the Hatters ended ten seasons in the top flight, which included winning the League Cup in 1988, its sole major honour. I won’t need to remind anyone here whom they beat or how.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A river runs through it<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lygetun (likely pronounced Lewg’tun) is one of the earliest known transcriptions of the town’s name. Old English recorded in the 9th century, it means ‘a village by the River Lea’, which rises as Chilterns’ chalk streams in modern-day Luton’s outskirts. Its roots are more likely Brythonic than Anglo-Saxon. The Saxons often adopted Celtic toponyms with religious connections. Scholars think the river’s name derives from the Celtic god, Lugus, sometimes depicted as three-faced and three-phallused.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lugus was sacred to shoemakers and not, surprisingly, multitasking lotharios. Nonetheless, he got about a bit. He also gave his name to Lyon \u2014 a contraction of the Gaulish Lugudunon \u2014 and many other places in Europe where Celts once ruled, including Carlisle, known to Britons as Luguwalion. Some authorities speculate that Irish leprechauns also derive their name from Lugus. Are those three shillelaghs, or are you just pleased to see us?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But we digress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Domesday Book records the place as Loitone, and by the time the football club was founded in 1885, Luton was famous for its millinery. Hence ‘the Hatters’. It would also become known for making motor vehicles. The Vauxhall works opened in 1905, the same year the team moved into Kenilworth Road. The ground has outlasted the factory, which closed in 2002. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Keny<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Plans to relocate from the cramped, antiquated ground \u2014 whose Oak Road entrances is, famously, through a terraced house and over its garden \u2014 have been around since at least the mid-1950s. A move to Milton Keynes was considered in the 1980s, almost two decades before the MK Dons wombled in from Wimbledon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The club spent \u00a313 million bringing the Keny up to Premier League requirements after winning promotion via a playoff penalty shoot-out last season. Yet, it will finally be moving. It has outlined planning permission for a 17,500-seat stadium, expandable to 23,000, on a 20-acre site at Power Court next to the railway station in central Luton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The target completion date for construction is 2026, so the 11,600-seat Kenilworth Road is in its sunset years. Another intimate old-school ground will fade into history, along with Woodbines and cloth caps. Given our dismal record there, Played 21, Won 6, Drawn 8, Lost 7, that can’t come too soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Up and down<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We first played Luton in October 1897 and won all six games during Luton’s three-year sojourn in the old Football League Division Two before financial difficulties forced them to drop to the Southern League. We beat them four times in the FA Cup before the next league encounter on their first arrival in the First Division in October 1955 (they had returned to the Football League in 1920). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, we would win only five of the ten league games before Luton was relegated in 1960 despite reaching the FA Cup Final the season before. They had lost to Nottingham Forest in a final in which Forest’s Roy Dwight, Elton John’s cousin, scored and broke his leg.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two more demotions within five years dropped Luton into the old Fourth Division for the 1965-66 season. The climb back to the top flight was relatively rapid, returning in 1974-75. However, they went straight back down despite beating us at home and drawing at Highbury. Oh, that Luton had won and not drawn their final game of the season. That would have relegated the neighbours and the mob at the Bus Stop, not just the latter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We were scarcely more dominant during Luton’s next spell in the top flight, 1982-1992, winning 11 of 20 league matches, with, as mentioned above, no wins in the final ten encounters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Opposition<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every entrant in the GHF Predictathon has Luton pegged for an immediate return to the Championship. Most predict a last-place finish. That Luton goes into Tuesday evening’s game two points and a place clear of the drop zone is a tribute to the battling spirit that manager Rob Edwards has instilled into his charges. Since the opening two league games, they have lost only twice by two goals or more, including Saturday’s 3-1 defeat at Brentford, and should probably have got at least a point out of the games lost 1-0 to Burnley and the neighbours and more than a point from a 1-1 draw with Wolves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Edwards played his favoured 3-4-1-2 for most of last season in the Championship, switching to 3-5-2 for the final games and playoffs. This season, he started with 3-5-2 but then tried a back four and a back five before reverting to something close to last season’s successful formula, a. 3-4-2-1 that got him points at home to Liverpool and Crystal Palace. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

He will undoubtedly flood the midfield against us to constrain space and double up on Saka and Martinelli. Given that Edwards has nine injuries to contend with and centre backs captain Tom Lockyer and Teden Mengi face late fitness tests, predicting his lineup would be a fool’s errand. Whoever plays will be urged on by raucous home support.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

French-Polish goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski, at 2.9 million euros, and midfielder Ross Barkley, who arrived on a free from Nice, have been Edwards’s standout bargain buys so far of the baker’s dozen of new players brought in at similar prices to bolster the squad for the Premiership. However, few save for Barkley, Zimbabwean international Marvelous Nakamba, whose last season’s loan from Aston Villa was made permanent in the summer, and Andros Townsend, picked up after being released by Everton, had Premiership experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kaminski has been playing well enough to earn a call-up to the Belgium national squad, while Barkley has added 240 Premiership games’ worth of experience to stabilise the midfield since his return from injury. Nakamba has earned good reviews at DM, but was crocked during he the last interlull, and will likely miss the game. Our own Sami Lokonga definitely will. While ineligible against his parent club, he is also recovering from a thigh injury that limited him to two appearances in mid-September.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As in the Championship last season, goals are a problem for Edwards’s side, just 13 in 14 games. Only the hapless Sheffield United has fewer. Luton ranks last in shots per 90 mins in the Premiership (2.36) and last in shots on target (21%). The second-lowest conversion ratio, 7%, compounds those shortcomings. Carlton Morris, a \u00a32 million pick-up from Barnsley in the summer of 2022 and who netted 20 times in the Championship last season, is the top-scorer this term with three and top-assister with two, but has not scored since September. One-half of Luton’s goals have come from set pieces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Arsenal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

We arrive at Kenilworth Road after a curate’s egg of a performance against Wolves. With a potentially tricky trip to Villa Park next Saturday, Arteta might rest Jesus, Trossard and Tomiyasu \u2014 the last by necessity after picking up an injury against Wolves. With Tomi facing a late fitness test, I will hazard as the starting XI:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raya<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White, Saliba, Gabriel, Zinchenko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00d8degaard, Rice, Havertz<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Saka, Nketiah, Martinelli<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Counting on the form book to count for little after three decades (only Cedric and Jorginho in our squad were born when the two sides last met, with Jorginho only six days old) and given the gap in quality between the two sides, it will be hugely disappointing if we don’t leave Kenilworth Road as we arrived, as league leaders, albeit after a scrappy 2-0 win.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Enjoy the game, ‘holics, near and far.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

And so rapidly to Kenilworth Road, Luton, for a Tuesday evening game under the lights. We shall be looking to avoid back-to-back defeats there for the first time since 1958 and searching for our first win at ‘the Keny’ after six draws and four defeats since February 1986.  The two teams last met in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":16,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[12,5],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8885"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/16"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=8885"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8885\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8888,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8885\/revisions\/8888"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=8885"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=8885"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.goonerholicsforever.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=8885"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}