Ex-Hatter could be part of new Luton manager's backroom staff at Kenilworth Road

New Hatters boss Rob Edwards hasn’t ruled out a former Luton defender potentially making his return to club when he looks to name his coaching staff at Kenilworth Road next week.

The 39-year-old is expected to be joined by Richie Kyle, who was number two to the Town chief at Forest Green Rovers and Watford as well.

The pair worked previously at the Football Association, with Kyle also having a role at the Canadian women’s national team, plus Blackpool’s youth and first-team set-ups, and in the academy at Everton and Blackburn Rovers, during his career.

However, there is also a chance that former Town full back Kevin Foley could be part of the backroom team as well, with the 38-year-old a long-time friend of Edwards, the pair having been at Wolves together.

Coming through the ranks at Luton, Foley made 166 appearances for the Hatters before heading to Molineux in 2007 and also playing for Charlton and Coventry, retiring after a spell at Billericay in 2018.

The ex-Republic of Ireland international had been working at United Soccer League Championship side Tampa Bay Rowdies over in America as assistant head coach recently, before moving back to England and was helping with the first team squad at Forest Green when Edwards was in charge.

On who his backroom staff will be, Edwards said: “We’re still working on my support team now, the club’s support team now.

“We’ve got some really good conversations, so we’ll be looking to announce a couple of people very, very soon.”

When Edwards has his team in place, Town chief executive Gary Sweet is confident they will be able to keep a Hatters side, who have finished 19th, 12th and sixth in their three seasons back in the Championship, improving in the coming years.

With previous manager Nathan Jones taking assistant Chris Cohen and first team coach Alan Sheehan with him to Southampton, he added: “As we’ve always said, during Nathan’s time, it doesn’t almost matter how quickly that is as long as we keep progressing.

"That might not necessarily mean a place higher in the league every year, there have been times where we might have fallen a little bit below, not often, in the last 10 years or so, but we’ve still progressed as a club.

"When the management and the staff change like this then it is a real threat that things can be disrupted, so our thought here is this is going to be a change of least disruption, but also someone who can really grow with us.

"We need to have patience with that, as we want to grow soundly and solidly, so that when we do progress we’re not necessarily falling back, there’s no trapdoors.

"That’s an old saying that we have here, as we progress, there’s no trapdoors, it’s just a firm footing and firm foundation.

"We believe that Rob and the team that he’ll bring, that we’ve been meeting, but we can’t quite be in a position to have them here, then I think that they’ll certainly deliver that.”