Hatters boss expects defensive trio to all be back in time for Luton's play-off campaign

Luton boss Rob Edwards expects all of Town’s trio of injured defenders to be available for the Hatters’ play-off campaign that starts next month.

Gabe Osho, Reece Burke and Dan Potts have all been out for various periods of time recently, Potts’ last match action coming three months ago in the 3-0 FA Cup defeat at Grimsby Town.

Both Burke and Osho have featured more recently, Osho’s last start the goalless draw at Millwall earlier this month, with Burke going off in the 2-0 win at Rotherham a fortnight ago.

However, with Town having two games left of the regular season, before their play-off campaign begins on May 13/14, when asked if he believed they would be fit to play a role, Edwards said: “Yes. Pottsy’s trained and trained fully out there today which is great.

"Burkey and Gabe are neck and neck, they’re different injuries, obviously they’re different people, but they’re both at similar stages of return to play.

"We’re hoping that’s not too long as well, so real positives with them.”

With those three out, club captain Sonny Bradley has come in to play three successive 90 minutes, despite having missed a large part of the season himself due to a horrific knee injury suffered against Reading on November 1.

He was able to help Luton extend their unbeaten run to 12 with a 2-1 victory over Middlesbrough on Monday night, as on his efforts, Edwards continued: “That game was the biggest test, no disrespect to the previous two games, but Middlesbrough are a different animal, and everyone would have seen that to the previous two games.

"He was really tested, in behind, having to cover certain distances at a higher speed than he would have done the other games as well, because Middlesbrough shift the ball so quick and the spaces that they pick up.

“They overload certain areas and we can be aggressive and try and press and then they’ll go bang and hit you in behind as well.

"They’ve got a lot of ways that they can hurt you, so it was a lot different for him.

"I thought he defended the box very well on a number of occasions, first contacts, some good clearances and he’s a leader.

“Then when we’ve really needed him, and we have, we’ve lost three defenders, he’s stepped in and delivered some really good performances.”

With Town going to Blackburn Rovers on Monday, Edwards reiterated striker Cauley Woodrow won’t be fit after the forward injured his knee in the 1-1 draw at Reading last week.

He said: “We’ll wait and see, he could be a little bit longer.

"We’re hoping, I wouldn’t want to put a timeframe on it at the moment, but he’ll be a little bit longer than those three.

“I think he caught a defender as he volleyed it, he’s just opened something up, so it’s one of those things.

"It’s really, really unlucky, he was in such good form as well, playing really, really well, but hopefully we’ll get him back in the next couple of weeks.”

Bar Woodrow though, the rest of the squad is looking strong as Edwards was able to rotate his team in-game on Monday, taking off Carlton Morris, Elijah Adebayo, Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu, Allan Campbell and Alfie Doughty during the second half.

He added: “A couple who have been missing are out there training, or if they’re not training, are progressing very, very well.

"We’ve not picked up any knocks or anything like that from the game, which is a real positive.

“We’ll have a plan for each game, but sometimes during it, it takes you in a different direction as something could happen.

"What I was really pleased with the other day was we had a plan, we wanted to make the five subs and pretty much everyone that we wanted to look after, we were able to do.”