Edwards admits to 'difficult' transfer window after Luton CEO criticises 'unscrupulous' agents

Luton boss Rob Edwards conceded it was a ‘difficult time’ during an incredibly challenging transfer window over the summer for the Hatters after chief executive Gary Sweet lambasted the ‘unscrupulous’ agents whom he felt disrupted matters at Kenilworth Road in that time.

With Town dropping out of the Premier League, they faced a real battle to keep the players who had experienced life in the top flight at the club, something that was made even harder by those nagging outside influences according to Sweet. They did lose Ross Barkley to Aston Villa, an understandable decision for the England international who had played a starring role in Luton’s attempts to stay up, with Chiedozie Ogbene also going to Ipswich Town for a fee of around £8m.

Gabe Osho left on a free transfer too, heading to French side Auxerre, while there were significant rumours linking Alfie Doughty and Elijah Adebayo away from Bedfordshire, with defender Teden Mengi a wanted man too, Serie A side Torino looking at him right up until the deadline passed. Discussing just how tough a window it was for the club, writing in his programme notes at the weekend, Sweet said: “Pretty much everything we’ve been through over the last 18 months has been untrod territory for us.

“The summer transfer window was a huge education for everyone involved as we saw unscrupulous agent after unscrupulous agent take a pop at selling many of our players an unrealistic fantasy which was a somewhat unplanned and hard to navigate disruption. Along with a number of other obstacles en-route, I can’t deny that we’ve all been tested over recent months.”

With Town starting the campaign without managing to claim a victory before the transfer window closed, things haven’t got too much better since then, Wednesday night’s tame 3-0 reverse at Leeds United made it nine defeats in 17 matches, nowhere near the kind of form everyone had expected ahead of the campaign, with Luton sitting in 16th spot.

Asked whether the disruption alluded to by Sweet had made managing the squad that bit more difficult when all the external noise was going on in the background, Edwards offered a rather straight bat to the question, saying: “There’s been a lot of challenges and the window was difficult, no doubt about it, for everyone. For us, the club, the players, so it’s a good experience, stuff that we’ve never had to deal with before. We’ll be better for it once we’ve got through this period now we’re going through, it was a difficult time.”

Looking back on it though, the Town chief did admit he would alter the way the club had gone about it, even though he always knew that with it being Luton’s first experience of relegation out of the Premier League, then it was never going to be smooth sailing, as he added: “Without name-checking other clubs, there are obviously other clubs that went down with us that lived through it before and experienced it and maybe with hindsight we’d had done things slightly differently.

"But I think it’s been a really interesting time where we’ve all found out a lot about each other and we are, we’re going to come through this and be better for it. Certainly we want to be back there at some stage, we’ve done it before so there’s no reason why we can’t. We’ve had a difficult few months, but that happens to a lot of teams, bigger and better clubs than us. We’ll come through and the players will come through and work through it and show their best form as well, I’m convinced of that.”