Hatters CEO felt 'immense' Edwards 'lost his way' towards the end of his Luton tenure

Hatters chief executive Gary Sweet explained that ‘immense’ manager Rob Edwards ‘lost his way’ slightly towards the end of his tenure as Town boss after struggling to cope with a number of issues.

The Luton chief had to deal with more than most during an eventful period of just over two years in charge at Kenilworth Road, as it was all plain sailing in the first 12 months, Town winning promotion to the Premier League via the play-offs, a result that sealed the club’s financial future for years to come, while also giving the supporters at Wembley a day they will never, ever forget.

When in the top flight, the Hatters were then giving their all to stay up, going toe-to-toe with some of the best teams in world football and earning a number of new supporters on the way for their spirited displays, even after defender and hugely popular captain Tom Lockyer suffered an on-field cardiac arrest at AFC Bournemouth in December.

From them on, with a whole host of injuries hitting, it became harder and harder for Edwards to put a competitive match-day squad out, as Town were eventually relegated back to the Championship in the penultimate week of the season. Aims had then been high for the current campaign, with talk of a title challenge in the offing, but with injuries continuing to bite hard, and results desperately disappointing, it led Edwards to admit he was working on his mental well-being due to the poor form affecting him personally, particularly after a 5-1 defeat at Middlesbrough.

However, a run of 10 successive away defeats, plus Luton losing their last four matches in a row as well, saw the ex-Wales international leave the club by mutual consent on Thursday afternoon. Discussing how the club came to taking such an unwanted decision, Sweet said: “It was a tough game on Monday (2-1 loss at QPR). You see a game sometimes and you see the team, the manager, doing everything possible to get something from the game and during that game we can see a pattern of bad luck that just occurs.

"I’m not putting all this down to bad luck of course, but there has been a real pattern of unfortunate events during a few games over recent times, which has ultimately proved that we’ve probably not quite got what we deserved. The last couple of away games for example, we’d definitely deserved some points in that and it’s not good enough, but sometimes you look at a game and you just feel that the luck certainly isn’t going our way and it’s up to us to change it and that was ultimately when the board and myself got together and made the decision.

"It’s not all about luck, the decision to part company with Rob was a tough one. I could speak all the time about Rob the person, Rob the character, the bond we had, the fantastic things he did for this football club. A lot of those things have been written, but the relationship that we had and still have is still very good. He’s a class individual and everyone here loves him.

"It’s hard to let somebody of that stature, that genuine quality, that person with such capability by the way. He’s an immense coach, manager, manager of people and he won’t mind me saying he lost his way a bit over recent weeks. He struggled a little bit with a couple of incidents that occurred over recent months, a year or so, which don’t really need digging up now, but he was challenged a bit by a number of those things which I think meant he lost his focus a little bit at times.

"But Rob’s still Rob, Rob will always be Rob and Rob will get back to a real positive frame of mind at some point. I said to him yesterday, I really hope that one day very soon that he will be in the away dug-out, so it was a good parting if there was such a thing. We, the board, the club, think the timing was right. It’s always a bit difficult, especially if you’re in a transfer window, but putting the transfer window aside, the timing was right.

"It’s important that the world sees that we stand by people, and we do. People who work for this football club are the most important people, it doesn't matter what or area you work in, your contribution is really important and that relationship we have with them is really important, but particularly the manager. He’s the ambassador, he’s the one that represents the club, so we did everything possible to try and support him in every way, but ultimately it didn’t quite work out.”

With Edwards now being able to take a much-needed break from football, asked if he thought there would be an element of relief felt by the manager, Sweet continued: “I think so in some ways. He’s not a quitter, but Rob wants to go and have a great holiday with the family and start to recharge, rebuild that energy that he had so much of.

"And this is the thing, Rob’s an incredible people person and takes on everybody’s emotions, everybody’s feelings and that can drain you when you have so many emotions and feelings. During the past few months we’ve gone through relegation, had so many injuries and when we’ve had, I don’t want to bring Locks (Tom Lockyer) up, but situations like that which create a huge emotional environment that we’ve got in this building.

"It’s not a clinical one, the players are great lads and Rob knows every single one of them individually and knows their families, knows everything about them. He takes everything on board, so it’s something that he should be proud of. It’s a great quality to have and when we’re looking for somebody else we want him to have that quality if we can. There aren’t many like him, so it was quite draining for him.”

Asked if he ever wanted to do more to try and take some of the burden off Edwards, or let him know he didn’t need to have the weight of the world on his shoulders when in the hot-seat, Sweet added: “We knew that we would be fighting a losing battle as it’s within him. You can’t change that character, I wouldn’t want to.”