On-loan Spurs midfielder handed instant debut for Luton at Mansfield

New Town signing Jamie Donley has been handed an instant debut for the Hatters at Mansfield in their League One encounter this afternoon.

The visitors have made four changes to their side from the 2-0 Carabao Cup second round defeat at Premier League Chelsea on Thursday night, with Donley, who arrived on a season-long loan from Tottenham Hotspur yesterday afternoon, named in the starting line-up, along with Jake Richards, Kal Naismith and Izzy Jones, meaning Harrison Ashby, Benny Benagr, Joe Johnson and Gideon Kodua drop to the bench.

Following on from his fine display at Stamford Bridge, summer signing Callum Marshall makes his full League One debut for the Hatters, as speaking about the forward’s midweek efforts, boss Jack Wilshere said: “He’s a good team player and you can see that. He wants to score goals, wants to attack, but you ask him to do a job for the team, close spaces and then go again and fight for balls that aren’t even on and he can get something out of it.

"We know in League One that’s really important. Sometimes you can’t always play and you have to put it in a channel and then you have to sometimes make a bad ball look good, so his energy is contagious for the team. I think the players see that from their number nine and they want to get up the pitch, they don’t want him to press on his own. He looked sharp all the time and that will do him really good, that 70 minutes. Unfortunately he didn’t get an opportunity, but if he gets an opportunity, he takes it.”

Although on the bench once more this afternoon, Ashby is confident he and his team-mates will be able to recover from their trip to West London in time, adding: “I think you can see from all the lads, we’ve worked our absolute behinds off in pre-season. You can see all the lads are fit as a fiddle and we’ll be all right.

“If you look at the opposition we’re playing against (Chelsea), I think everyone can agree there’s a lot of world class players in that team and I think the lads put in a great shift. There’s a lot of things to take into the next couple of weeks and the next games. I know it’s a 2-0 scoreline, but you watch the performance, I think it’s one of the best we’ve put in over the last couple of weeks, so let's just take that into Sunday and I think we’ll be all right.

"He (Wilshere) told us he was proud of us and he said the gameplan went to a tee, we’re here to do what the gaffers tells us to do and I think we did that, I think we take what we did into Sunday and we’ll be perfectly fine. A big part of football is recovery and we’ve got the facilities at Luton to use for that, so we can get to 100 percent for Sunday.

“For me, football’s football. I don’t care who I play, where I play, as long as I’m playing footbalI, I’m happy so whether it’s at Stamford Bridge or down the road at my local park, I’m happy as Larry.”

Stags: Liam Roberts, Kyle Knoyle, Stephen McLaughlin, Ryan Sweeney (C), Jon Russell, Michael Smith, Liam Thompson, Nathan Moriah-Welsh, Deji Oshilaja, Regan Hendry, Louis Reed. Subs: Ellior Hewitt, Lucas Akins, Luke Bolton, David McGoldrick, Rhys Oates, Frazer Blake-Tracy, Owen Dodgson.

Hatters: Josh Keeley, Izzy Jones, Kal Naismith (C), Hakeem Odoffin, George Johnston, Liam Walsh, Kasey Palmer, Jamie Donley, Jake Richards, Emilio Lawrence, Callum Marshall. Subs: James Shea, Mads Andersen, Joe Johnson, Nahki Wells, Gideon Kodua, Benny Benagr, Harrison Ashby. Referee: Richard Eley.