Nakamba faces a 'new normal' as Zimbabwean international battles to play his part for Luton

Town boss Rob Edwards has stated it will be a case of finding out a ‘new normal’ to allow midfielder Marvelous Nakamba to have the best chance of making an impact for the Hatters in the short term

The 30-year-old was a starring member of the Luton team that won promotion to the Premier League back in 2023, having joined on loan from Aston Villa in the January transfer window. He made the move permanent that summer, but then with the club in the top flight, suffered a serious knee injury that ended his campaign in December.

Having battled back to a level of fitn ess that meant he could take to the field for the first time in over eight months at QPR recently, Nakamba played the first half of the Carabao Cup exit on penalties, producing a performance that excited those watching on, as the Zimbabwean international looked like he had never been away, breaking up play effective and using the ball impressively too.

He was then on the bench for the 2-1 defeat to the same side in in their league clash a few days later, and could now up his minutes when Town head to Millwall tomorrow afternoon. Speaking on just how they will go about keeping him ready to have the best chance possible of featuring on a regular basis, Edwards said: “He’s progressing well, it’s a real challenge and we had a good chat with him and some of the staff the other day as we do have to manage his body.

"He won’t be able to train necessarily as much as he or us would want him to all the time at the moment, but that’s because there’s a real good plan in place to make sure he’s fit for selection. We’ve got to try and get that balance right of getting him fit when he can’t always train every single day, and it’s trying to find that. It’s almost a little bit of a new normal for him, so we’ve got to make sure we find that for the foreseeable until we’re confident then that he’s fully there.

"We’ll see how that progresses over the next few weeks and months, but I think Marv is someone who gets better with game time and playing. He’s proved that to us in the past when he first joined here. All right he didn’t have the injury then, but he probably wasn’t fully fit when he came in, but just played, played, played, played and got up to speed fairly quickly. So I’m bearing that in mind as well.”

Nakamba, like a lot of Town’s squad who had suffered injuries last season, including Reece Burke and Teden Mengi, had the international break to carry on getting some welcome blocks of training in following the Rangers defeat, which should put them in a better position to be able to feature at the New Den tomorrow. Edwards continued: “We’ve had a couple of good weeks work with the ones that have remained, players have worked hard, a couple of weekends off to be able to refresh a little bit which is nice with some really good work in there as well.

"We’re looking forward to getting back to business with the games now, but it’s been, I think, a really good couple of weeks for some of the lads who have been out for a while to be able to catch up and do some more work. People like Marv who have been out for a long, long time, to be able to get out on the training pitch and be able to get used to a team that plays a little bit differently to the one he came out from originally, it’s helped a lot.

Another player who is back and available for the Hatters now is Danish defender Mads Andersen, who was also on the bench against QPR after playing the second 45 of the cup exit. Edwards added: “Mads has been training throughout the last couple of weeks. He’s another one now who basically now will be judged off almost performance and where I see everybody at. There’s a few ahead of him at the moment because fitness-wise they have been playing, but it’s great to have Mads in and about it as well.”

Meanwhile, on those who went away for international duty, Amari’i Bell, Thomas Kaminski, Joe Johnson, Reuell Walters and Zack Nelson, Edwards added: They’ve come back well, a little bit of illness from Reuell but he’s trained today. It’s brilliant to have some young players away with the England youth teams, I’m really proud of them. Thomas and Amari’i have come back all fine as well, so everyone’s unscathed.”