Hatters chief insists on-loan Aston Villa keeper will play a 'big part' in Town's Championship run-in

Deadline day signing Jed Steer has been tipped to play a big role for the Hatters in their run-in to the Championship season by boss Nathan Jones.

The 29-year-old signed a loan deal at Kenilworth Road from Premier League side Aston Villa on Monday's transfer deadline day after spending the majority of the season on the bench in the top flight, with one appearance, that in the 3-0 defeat at Chelsea.

He also played twice in the Carabao Cup, while despite just two senior outings last term, is well known to Jones, who played alongside Steer when he was loaned to Yeovil Town from Norwich City as a 19-year-old back in 2011.

Then he managed two clean sheets in 14 outings, but the Town boss kept a close eye on his development since, the former England youth international also having stints with Cambridge, Doncaster, Yeovil again, Huddersfield and Charlton, before helping his parent club reach the Premier League via the play-offs in May 2019.

Once Croatian international Simon Sluga departed for Bulgarian side Ludogorets ahead of the window close, Jones made his move to increase the competition for James Shea, as speaking about his former team-mate, he said; “He’s had a wonderful career.

"He came in, he was a young lad, it was one of his first loans at Yeovil as we had a fantastic record with goalkeepers.

"We took Alex McCarthy, we took Asmir Begovic, we had Jed Steer, Stephen Henderson, all those made league debuts at Yeovil, Marek Stech at the time from West Ham, so we had a wonderful pedigree of taking goalkeepers.

"Jed did fantastically well, he has gone on and had a really good career, the pinnacle of that was getting promoted.

"I was at the play-off final, he’s showed good experience, he's come in, added to us, a wonderful character, fitted in really well, and the character of people is really important when we bring them in as well.

"We knew he’d fit in, he’ll play a big part in the run-in, I know that, so let’s see where we go.”

Jones had wanted to bring someone in full time rather than a loan deal, but when that couldn’t happen was more than happy to get such a reliable replacement in Steer.

He added: “We would have loved to get a permanent keeper that could have been ours and that we could have developed, but that wasn’t possible.

"We needed to take a real experienced, safe pair of hands that we knew that would fit into the environment, and also be good enough to give us a real push until the end of the season.

"Jed ticks all those boxes and I know all about him, I played with him, Breezy and Henri did as well, so we know he is a really good human being.

“He’s played a number of games at good levels and good productive loans.

“We believe we have brought in someone yes for the short term, but we believe in the interim, this is a really good decision for the club.

"There is real competition in that area now.

"We lost Simon which was a calculated decision, we knew we could bring someone of Jed’s quality in and to do that in the interim.

"Now we have two very good keepers and two that we trust and they’re then supplemented by Harry Isted so the goalkeeping department is in a decent position.”