Hatters chief has a 'good feeling' about Town's academy after awarding five U18s development deals

Luton boss Rob Edwards revealed he has a ‘good feeling’ about the Hatters' academy after awarding five of Town’s most promising youngsters their first professional development contracts this week.

After a superb season for the U18s in which they reached the FA Youth Cup fifth round and also romped to the EFL Youth Alliance South East title by 12 points, it saw four of the side, Zack Nelson, Joe Johnson, Jacob Pinnington and Jayden Luker all awarded deals.

Recent recruit Axel Piesold, who has been at Spurs and more recently Dunstable Town, also put pen to paper, after being on the bench for the first team, along with Johnson, for the FA Cup fourth round defeat at Grimsby Town last month.

Edwards knows there is plenty of hard work ahead of the quintet to break into the first team reckoning at Kenilworth Road, especially with Luton pushing for play-off place in the Championship once more this term, as he said: “What we do know is that if lads are good enough, we can see a real talent there and a top attitude and athletically they can handle it, then there will be opportunities going forward for some of those young players.

“They should take confidence in that, but in the end it’s down to them and how hard they work and how much they want it as well, because you’ve got to go out and make it happen.

"We’ve got a good feeling with a lot of those boys in the academy.

“It’s down to them and no-one is going to give you anything in life.

"You’ve got to go and take it, and football is no different to anything else, any other kind of work.

"You might need a little bit of luck here and there, but when you get that opportunity you’ve got to go and take it, grab it with both hands and don’t let it go.

"We do believe in some of those young players and nothing would please me more to give an opportunity to someone if they deserve it, but we can’t just hand it out.

"We are in the business of winning football matches as well, so we’ve got to try and get that balance right.”

With Town having a highly impressive array of talent in their younger age-groups at the moment, including Jake Burger, Millar Matthews-Lewis, Jack Bateson and Ben Tompkins to name just four, then Edwards could well look to sign more of the academy to the Development squad in the future.

He added: “We’ve got a number of good players in the academy and there’s a lot of good work that’s going on there.

"Everyone will have been aware of the cup run and how well the lads are doing in the league.

"You can see it on a daily basis the hard work they are putting in and a lot of lads are getting their reward for that now.

"They’ve got to keep their head down and keep working very, very hard, but it’s fantastic that we’ve got players that we can see a future for.

"Also there’ll be others that might not be getting talked about as much as some, and someone could come through later as well.

"Youth development is really difficult to nail it down and there’ll be people at different stages of their journey at the moment.”