Luton chief expecting 'imminent' arrival of another new goalkeeper

Luton boss Nathan Jones anticipates a second arrival to complete the goalkeeping department at Kenilworth Road is ‘imminent.’

Town have brought in former stopper Matt Macey for an undisclosed fee from Scottish Premier League side Hibernian already this summer, but it still leaves them light between the posts.

With James Shea out until well into the new year after suffering a serious knee injury, the Hatters only have Harry Isted in their ranks, as although the inexperienced stopper excelled during his first team outings last term, Jones wants another keeper to battle it out for the number one jersey.

He said: “The goalkeeping department, we want to strengthen.

“We’ve managed to bring Matt Macey in, god willing there's going to be one imminent as well, so we’ve now got three goalkeepers, plus James Shea who’s injured at this point in time.

“I would imagine in a weeks time our goalkeeping department will be significantly improved from the two that we’ve brought in, plus Harry, plus the goalkeeping coach (Kevin Pilkington) who now has had time together with them as well.”

On whether the new boy will be a loan or permanent addition, Jones continued: “We don’t like taking loans here, so if it’s going to be a loan, it will be a loan with a view to do it permanently.

“We want to move forward continually and keep moving forward and that’s what we’ve always done.

“We’ve brought in a relatively young keeper, 27-year-old Matt Macey who we know.

“We also know he’s nowhere near the ceiling he can reach, a real good size, good presence, really hungry to do well and that was the key factors in us signing him.

“Then we hope to bring in someone that if it’s a loan, it will be a loan with a permanent, or another permanent signing, depending on what the scope is to do that.”

Macey is now in his second spell at the club after playing 13 times during the 2016-17 season when borrowed from Arsenal, although Luton soon found themselves with a goalkeeper crisis on their hands, after he followed Christian Walton in being recalled, leaving Town with just Stuart Moore on the books.

It was similar last term, the Hatters using six keepers in the league due to injuries, and Jones wants to make sure that doesn’t happen again, adding: “He (Macey) was just gathering momentum here as I thought he did well when he came here.

“We had a bit of a disaster that year, Christian Walton got recalled, then inexplicably Matt Macey got recalled and it left us in real limbo and we didn’t want to be like that again.

“I’m not saying it cost us last season, but we made a decision to let (Simon) Sluga go, we brought in Jed Steer who then got injured, then we had to take emergency loans because James Shea got injured.

"So we had real bad luck in that way, but we didn’t want that to happen again.”