Sweet believes he is still the right man to remain as Hatters CEO
Lifelong Town supporter rules out idea of a director of football
Hatters chief executive Gary Sweet has insisted he is still very much the right man to carry on in his role after being questioned whether that was the case by supporters recently.
The lifelong supporter has been heavily involved with the club since he helped set up the Luton Town Supporters' Trust back in 2003 following the highly controversial takeover by John Gurney, while he then headed up the 2020 consortium who bought the club five years later in February 2008. Having held the position of CEO for over 18 years now, Sweet was named Championship Chief Executive of the Year in 2023 as the Hatters made it all the way from non-league to the Premier League.
However, since then, Luton have gone into something of a freefall, relegated from the top flight and then to make matters worse, dropped out of the Championship last season as well, meaning they began the 2025-26 campaign back in League One once more. It has seen Sweet and his board members come in for a fair amount of stick from supporters in the last 12 months or so, particularly for what has been perceived as a lack of money spent on the squad, especially in the January transfer window when the Hatters were in the top tier of English football, as just Daiki Hashioka, Tom Holmes and Taylan Harris came in to bolster a squad who went on to suffer a massive injury crisis in the new year.
With the criticism on social media, but also from a vocal minority at recent home games as well, then asked by BBC Three Counties if he was still the right man for the job, and whether Town’s board and directors had got above their station since mixing it with the big boys for a season, Sweet said: “I certainly believe I am. I’m full of energy, I don’t lack any of that, I’m full of enthusiasm and spirit and I know how to run the business, but it’s ultimately a decision that the board will take, not me.
"There’s nobody that cares more, there’s nobody that’s going to work harder, there’s nobody that’s going to be so enthused about day to day, everything we do. I've been nearly 18 years in the role, I swear I’m just as enthusiastic and I want and desire the progression as much now as I ever have done.
“No, we haven’t (become too big for our boots), we’re here in these offices, we’re so grounded, we always have been. We were so conscious of that, it was a real conscious thing that we remained humble, we remained Luton. There’s a lot of Lutonians who work for us here but we keep ourselves Lutonian here, and that has never happened. Whatever the perception might be, that has never ever happened.”
One issue that has been levelled against Sweet is the amount of time he has been spending on Town’s new stadium at Power Court, with some ‘major milestones’ promised in the next few months, after the River Lea was officially opened up recently. Asked how demanding it has been overseeing the new stadium and whether he has ever considered appointing a director of football to help share some of that load, he added: “If it’s this week it’s a lot more as since the transfer window closed its been pretty full on with Power Court, on average almost half of my time.
"It is a valid question (about a director of football), is it a question that we have asked ourselves whether that’s something that we need? It is, amongst the board, our exec team, and the answer is no it isn’t. Generally speaking what you have is a director of football, it’s a continental, European frame structure generally that supports a head coach rather than a football manager.
"We want Matt (Bloomfield) to be a manager and to manage that whole environment at the Brache, including medical and including sports science and including getting involved heavily in recruitment, which he does. Let’s see, but we do need to give this time, if we identify the areas that might not be working, a director of football is not going to solve that.”