Luton boss confident Town have enough options to cover Saville's absence

Luton boss Jack Wilshere is confident he has the players to cope with midfielder George Saville’s absence from tomorrow’s League One clash with Rotherham United at Kenilworth Road.

The 32-year-old has started every single third tier game for the Hatters since joining on a free transfer from Millwall in the summer, only missing an hour of league football having been substituted a mere three times, and not since the 1-0 home defeat to Cardiff City back on August 23. Saville would have been suspended anyway for the contest after picking up his fifth booking of the campaign in last weekend’s 3-0 triumph at Stockport County, but while that rules him out of the Millers clash, he is away with the Northern Ireland side who are in Slovakia for tonight’s World Cup qualifier and then host Luxembourg on Monday evening.

Discussing missing the midfielder’s undoubted influence and just who could replace him in the centre of the pitch for Town against Rotherham, Wilshere said: “Sav’s been excellent and I spoke to him after the Stockport game as I didn’t want him to feel like we were playing it without him. He’s obviously got a yellow card as well which came into our thinking as well, that that can be his game that he misses. He’s been excellent, he has a way on the pitch and it’s through his experiences of playing at a higher level and through having such a long career.

"He has a lot of know-how in possession, out of possession, game management, stuff like that, he’s helped us with, so we’re looking at it. Haks (Hakeem Odoffin) is someone who can play there, Lamine’s (Fanne) played there, Zack Nelson is an option to play there as well, so with the players we’ve got back as well, we’ve got enough options there.”

Saville isn’t the only one who won’t be available for Luton tomorrow, as striker Ali Al-Hamadi is away with the Iraq national side, getting 45 minutes in last night’s first leg of the fifth-round AFC World Cup playoff with the UAE at Mohammed Bin Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi on Thursday night, scoring his first goal of the season and fourth in 16 caps for his country.

Having only made two cameos from the bench since his deadline day loan move to Kenilworth Road from Ipswich Town, then being away to get some greater match exposure could do him good, with Wilshere continuing: “We thought about that and I spoke to Ali about that as well. Again, I didn’t want him to feel like we were playing a game without him because he’s going to be someone we need. He needs some games, he scored yesterday, so good for him and let’s see how he comes back.”

The final player who is away is Marvelous Nakamba, who got 90 minutes in the Vertu Trophy success over Brighton & Hove Albion U21s recently, his only outing since Wilshere took over, although he didn’t figure as Zimbabwe lost 3-1 to Algeria in a friendly. The Town chief added: “No-one’s really done anything wrong since I’ve been here, so it’s been tough for me to pick a squad, pick a team. You can see within that we’ve made changes, so we trust everyone in the squad completely. Of course we miss Sav and Ali and Marv, but we feel like it’s a good moment for someone else to come in, play a game and show us what they can do.”