Midfielder available for Luton's FA Cup tie but winger remains a 'frustrating' absentee

Luton will have Jake Richards available for selection when they travel to League Two side Fleetwood Town for their FA Cup second round contest tomorrow afternoon, although Izzy Jones is still a ‘frustrating’ absentee for the Hatters.

With winger Jones having started to make his comeback from a stress fracture to his back once new boss Jack Wilshere took over, getting 90 minutes against both Stockport County and Rotherham United last month, also netting his first goal of the season in the 3-0 victory at Edgeley Park, only to then come off at half time in the 5-0 defeat to Barnsley with what was deemed a kick to the leg at the time.

The ex-Middlesbrough attacker has now missed the last three matches though, and won’t be available to feature at the Highbury Stadium tomorrow either, as boss Jack Wilshere said: “He’s still in a little bit of pain which is frustrating for everyone because he was on his way back. He was building his minutes up, he was building his momentum, he was feeling comfortable and then an incident in the Barnsley game where he had to stop and he hasn’t got going since.

"So it’s frustrating, but we’re going to need him at some point and we have to try and get him back as quickly as possible, but it’s also an opportunity for others to step in. We’re allowed nine players on the bench in the FA Cup, so the whole squad will look a little bit different as this is our biggest test right now. It’s the FA Cup, I love the FA Cup, I think it’s special and we have to keep hold of that in this country and we’ll be going there to try and win the game.”

With Jordan Clark, Nahki Wells and Jake Richards all missing the weekend match with Bolton Wanderers and Tuesday night’s Vertu Trophy knock-out win over Exeter City, then asked about the trio’s chances of appearing against the Cod Army, Wilshere continued: “Jordan’s closer as he’s been training with us, Nahki still hasn’t trained, but Jake’s okay.

"He got a knock against Huddersfield and he was close for the Bolton game, but we tried to do it with him earlier in the season. I think it was the Rotherham game where we took him off at half time because he had a little bit of a kick, so we wanted to give him a bit more time to recover, but he’s back in training now.”

All the players who did feature against the Grecians are okay though, with Joe Johnson getting his first outing of the campaign and Reuell Walters earning a first run-out since early August, as discussing the full backs, Wilshere said: “They’re good, they came through it well. I thought they did really well, they’re quite different profiles to what we’ve had there this season, but I thought they performed really well.

“The main thing was they came through. It was their first minutes, we introduced them a little bit to the role of a full back, how I see it. Obviously Reuell knows it quite well, but I thought Joe was really good as well. Everyone came through, everyone’s all right, everyone had Wednesday off, some recovered on Thursday and we trained today, we’ll be ready to go.”

Town go into the game on the back of a hectic schedule that doesn’t show any signs of slowing down, the Hatters also in League One action on Tuesday night with a trip to Leyton Orient, before returning home next weekend when facing Port Vale. Asked whether that would alter his selection plans tomorrow, Wilshere said: “We’re always thinking about how we can maximise availability, maximise performance, but that being said also we know in this league we have to be able to deliver performances on a Tuesday and repeat again on a Saturday and we’ve shown we can do that.

"It’s been a tough week for us, Barnsley, Huddersfield, Bolton. We had to dig deep and also produce some physical performances, probably beyond what we’ve done already and we did that. We showed we can do that and we want players to be fresh, but we also have to understand that we have players who can do all three.”

With a place in the third round at stake, where Town could potentially draw one of the Premier League big boys and earn a bumper pay day, then on getting through, Wilshere added: “We have to earn that, but also when I was looking through results in the EFL Trophy and seeing some of the changes that teams made, probably a lot of teams aren’t in the position to do what we can do, changing all 11 and then still producing a performance like that. It’s credit to how we work and how the players deliver every day as that’s not easy. We have to find ways to rotate and maximise performance.”