Hatters CEO relishing the fact that Luton are being labelled a 'big and ugly' team

Luton CEO Gary Sweet is relishing the fact that Luton are being labelled a ‘big and ugly’ team going into today’s Championship play-off final against Coventry City.

After finishing third in the table over 46 games, the Hatters took on Sunderland in the end of season lottery, overturning a 2-1 deficit to see off the Black Cats 2-0 in their second leg at Kenilworth Road recently, as they produced an awesome performance that simply overpowered their visitors on the day, who visibly wilted under the aerial pressure of both Carlton Morris and Elijah Adebayo.

It led to opposing manager Tony Mowbray to state that Luton just ‘boot it up there', adopting a style he would ‘never want to play’, with Town boss Rob Edwards having a thinly veiled dig back in his pre-match press conference earlier in the week.

With so much financial prize at stake for the Hatters today, victory securing the finance for their new stadium at Power Court, asked if he will be able to enjoy the game, Sweet said: “Yeah, yeah, lets see what happens, but I think I’ll enjoy the game.

“I have got better at that recently, it is the reason why I let go occasionally.

“But I have got better at enjoying it.

"It is going to be a great game and I quite like the fact people, everyone thinks we’re just a big and ugly team.

"That is lovely that.”

Town midfielder Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu also felt that the players were supremely confident that with Sunderland only a single goal ahead from the first leg, it played into their hands perfectly, as he said: “We even knew that after the game against Sunderland, because they didn't score enough goals, we just knew that we’re going to overpower them when we came back to Kenilworth Road and that’s what we did.

"We knew if we play our game we could beat any team that comes to our ground and make them feel small.

"That’s what we did in the first half, second half, we had chances, I don’t know what Cody (Drameh) was doing (missing an open goal), he should have passed it on to Alf (Alfie Doughty), but we knew we could score more goals.

"We limited their threats, we could have scored four or five, but two was enough to get us into the final.

“We know that we could score goals, Sunderland need to score threes and fours to beat us and we just knew they had no centre backs, so we just loaded the ball and they couldn't handle us physically.

"Gabe (Osho) scored, Locks (Tom Lockyer) scored, I don’t think they had a threat at all, so that was a good one for us.”

Luton’s advance to the final came after they were forced into a change of manager with 21 games of the campaign gone, Nathan Jones leaving in November to join Southampton, with Edwards taking over.

When Jones opted to go, Sweet immediately looked at his departure not as a problem, but as a chance to improve, as he continued: “At the end of the day he is an absolutely key member of staff.

"The manager is the spokesperson for us, it is odd that the football manager is the key spokesperson for the business, which is fine, but it is just one person, a member of staff.

"If you take anyone out of this business here, including me, it is an opportunity for us to improve.

"That is how we have to look at it, thank goodness we did!”

With Jones then sacked by the Saints after a mere three months in charge, unable to halt a poor sequence of results that saw them sitting at the bottom of the Premier League, Sweet did feel some real sympathy for the Welshman, but confirmed there had been no plans to invite him to Wembley this afternoon.

He added: “I feel uncomfortable with how he was treated at Southampton.

"We care for Nathan, he is a good guy, he served us for a long time but this is probably not the game where it is our duty to invite.

"Nathan will be warmly welcomed at our club just like John Still but maybe not this time.

"If Nathan wants to get a ticket from someone else then fair enough and he’s welcome to be there.

"If he is there then fantastic but our focus is upon no distractions.

"Absolute focus on the pitch to let the coaching staff perform and the players perform.”