Still confirms he won’t be selecting Jake Howells

The 24-year-old is currently on the transfer list after requesting a move away from Luton during the summer, but despite one bid being lodged, it was sort of Hatters’ valuation.

When asked if he would consider including Howells again now the window has shut, Still said: “No I don’t see Jake Howells playing for us at all, loans (a loan deal), we’ll have to wait and see.

“This is a long drawn out saga with Jake, but it’s difficult, because Jake made it clear he wanted to go and that was after talks with the club, with myself and given advice that I’m not sure that is the correct thing for you to do.

“In doing that, we’ve brought other players in and I want to make it clear that if you spoke to Jake, and asked him how hard did this club work to try and make it work for him, he would tell you, we tried everything we could to make it work, because of what he’s done for the football club.

“We had one offer that wasn’t to the value that we put on Jake from day one. We’ve just seen on transfer deadline and a slightly different situation, Everton saying John Stones isn’t going, well we never said that with Jake, we said you could, but the valuation has got to be met.

“We said Jake, if that’s what you want to do, I don’t want you to go, but we’ll support you 100 per cent but we have a valuation of course.

“He understands that, the valuation wasn’t met, what can we do? We can’t do anything.”

Despite Still’s decision, the boss confirmed that Howells hasn’t been frozen out by anyone at the club as he added: “He trains every day, trains properly, we would never exclude him from anything.

“He’s our player and whenever he comes into training he gets everything that everybody else gets, like he’s always done.

“I don’t look up on him any different, but he wanted to go and I explained if he does that I’m going to bring someone else in and he understood that, so that’s where we are.”