Edwards believes being written off will work in Luton's favour this year

Luton boss Rob Edwards believes that having his side’s Premier League survival chances written off by almost everyone in the game can only work in their favour this term.

Town entered their first top flight campaign in over 30 years as the clear favourites with the bookies to go down, their odds 2/5 to be playing Championship football once more next year, 7/4 to avoid the drop.

Ahead of tonight’s trip to Chelsea, the Hatters are 10/1 to leave Stamford Bridge with the points, with the hosts as low as 1/4 to register a first victory of the season in front of the Sky Sports cameras.

However, Edwards insists such predictions will be to Town’s advantage, saying: “There’ll be an expectancy which we can play on, that’s fine, I don’t mind that, being the underdog, we can play on that and we can use that.

“We know what we’re going into this year, we know externally and I get it by the way, that we’ll be written off by a lot of people and we’ll be second favourites in a lot of the games that we’re going into.

"That’s understandable, that’s nothing to be taken personally, we’ll get our heads around that.

"I’ve got to be honest, I think it helps us, I do.

"I’ve said this previously building into the Brighton game, it probably helped us last year as well.

"We have our own standards, our own beliefs, I know what these players are capable of.

"I’ve got total belief and faith in them that we can be competitive in every game.

"I’m not saying we’re going to go and win every game, I know that’s not going to be the case, but I think we can compete.

"What we've got to make sure is we learn, we don’t give gifts away, we don’t allow opposition teams to have that freebie, so those are some of the things that we’ve taken from the last game (against Brighton).

"The other teams are going to be favourites, that’s fine, I think that puts more pressure on them and takes it off us.

"But when I’m having a meeting with the players, I’m stressing that we want to go and win this game, and that will always be our message before every game.”

Chelsea will be under pressure themselves too, as despite spending near enough £1bn since Todd Boehly took over in May 2022, results have not been anywhere near good enough.

Finishing a woeful 12th by their own high standards last season, a massive 45 points off top spot and just 10 away from the relegation zone, plus missing out on European football, was not what the American businessman would have envisaged when he spent £4.25bn to buy the club from Roman Abramovich over 12 months ago.

They appointed former Paris-Saint Germain and Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino to arrest the slide, but his opening day 1-1 draw with Liverpool at Stamford Bridge means the Blues have now failed to won in front of their own fans since March 4, a run spanning eight games, unable to beat the likes of Everton and Nottingham Forest.

Discussing the poor form in West London, Edwards continued: “We’ll use everything we can get.

"There will be pressure on them at home, they’ll be huge favourites and probably rightly so, but that’s fine by us.

"The fans will be turning up expecting them to turn us over and maybe convincingly so, but there will be some realistic fans who know it could be a more difficult game than what a lot of people think.

"That’s down to us, I can’t control all that and what they’ve done in the past.

"I just know they’re a really talented group of players, they’ve got a brilliant manager, and it's going to be a very, very difficult game for us.”

Since that draw with the Reds, Chelsea went out and splashed out another near enough £200m to bolster their squad and take their overall spend up to nearly 10 figures, bringing in Brighton’s Ecuadorian midfielder Moises Caicedo for a British transfer record of £115m.

They also shelled out around £60m on Southampton’s young talent Romeo Lavia and £17.2m on Santos forward Deivid Washington as well.

Despite the first two additions, and dominating large parts of the game at West Ham on Sunday, Chelsea were beaten 3-1, leaving Pochettino still searching for that first victory.

Asked about their start to life under the former Argentine international, Edwards added: “He’s a world class manager isn’t he.

“He’s someone I hugely respect, how can you not with what he’s done?

I really appreciate his style and what he’s done, but I’ve got to be my own man, we’ll always try and learn from each other and nick ideas when we can.

"It will be great to be alongside him on the touchline, but again we want to be able to give a really good account of ourselves and be competitive on the day.

“They dominated both games in large periods for large periods of time.

"They had a lot of the ball against Liverpool, I think after (Mo) Salah’s goal got ruled out they really grew into it and looked very, very, very good.

"I’ve been lucky enough to get to both games live and again they dominated large spells against West Ham.

"They’ll be frustrated that they’ve not taken something from the game, but I can see a lot of good stuff from them.

"People will be looking at the results first and foremost, I get that, but in terms of performances and individual players’ performances as well, there’s a lot of good things there, so we’re well aware it’s a difficult game for us.”