Hatters look to make hay at happy hunting ground Aggborough

Town have won five and drawn one of their six visits to the West Midlands and the encounter marks the midway point in a string of five difficult games where they will have faced the title favourites, the league’s dark horses and last season’s three disappointed play-off teams.

Luton have failed to fire so far this season, taking six points from their opening five games, including goalless draws against Forest Green Rovers and Cambridge United this week, but former Welsh U21 international Jake Howells is focused on improving with a win.

He said: “We go there with the same attitude and we’ll respect what they’ve done in the league last season and this season, but we will be the same like we did today and the same we did Saturday and we go there to get three points.

“I don’t think we can worry about anyone else other than us. We know we’ve got the players in the team, it’s just about us performing on the day and Saturday we’ll got out there and give it our all and if we work hard, clean sheet you never know what can happen.”

Having started Town’s opening day 1-0 defeat at Southport Howells has had to make do with making an impact from the bench and is hopeful he will get a start on Saturday, saying: “You never know, I keep working hard in training and in games and we’ll see what happens.”

New loan signing Paul Benson is hoping to make his debut at Kidderminster after missing Saturday’s goalless draw with Cambridge due to a lack of match fitness.

The striker had been frozen out by former club Swindon, where he was forced to train alone in the gym as he said: “I was just totally exiled when I was there, I didn’t do any training with the first team and I don’t know why it happens.

“There’s no reason for it as I haven’t caused a problem there.

“I’ve not done any training for the last five weeks, so I’ve got a bit of catching up to do.

“It’s nothing that a week with the gaffer won’t cure. The only way I’ll get fit is training and playing games.

“I’ll have to do it that way, but hopefully after a couple of games I’ll be up to where I want to be.”

Experienced keeper Mark Tyler knows that it won’t get any easier for Luton in their forthcoming matches after an already tough start to the season.

Speaking after Saturday’s draw, he added: “I think we will get a lot of games like that this year, the odd goal will win it.

“You can tell by our fitness that we go for 100 minutes. We just need to stay solid as a team, which we have done in the last five games and hopefully them 0-0s will turn into 1-0s.

“We’ll be back into training tomorrow, warming down, and obviously Thursday/Friday we will prepare for the game.

“It’s a nice place to go and we’ve had a few victories but like I said we won’t go there to sit back and take a point.

“We want to go and win, but we don’t want to lose. So it will be another solid performance and see what we can pick up.

“It’s early days so it’s good that we’re playing them (the top teams) now. We’ve stepped up our performances every game at the moment. Yes it’s going to be hard, but you don’t expect anything less from those three teams coming up. Our emphasis is not to lose the game. If we have to draw 0-0 we draw 0-0. We take a point and move on to the next one.”