Sweet: New boss must be backed

Previous boss Richard Money, who left the club by mutual consent on Monday, never fully won over Town’s army of followers during his 18 months in charge.

With the club destined for another nail-biting play-off campaign to win promotion back into the Football League, Sweet took the opportunity to appeal for unity.

He said: “I’m really putting up a plea to all supporters to get behind us.

“Let’s not do what Luton Town have done in the last year and a half and get on people’s backs before they’ve started the job.

“I’m baffled sometimes. Here we have a bunch of fantastic Luton Town supporters, I’m one of them and I sit there and still support the team.

“We’re in touching distance of what could be a joyous occasion for us with victory in the play-offs.

“We’re firmly in the play-off zone and looking at a play-off final.

“I think we’ve got to get behind Gary Brabin, Alan Neilson, Dmitri Kharine, all the rest of the staff here and every single player that takes the pitch and support positively with Gary Brabin at the helm.”

The decision to replace Money was made after a turgid 2-1 defeat at Southport on Saturday that saw Hatters slip 15 points behind leaders Crawley Town.

Although Town could have had their pick of a number of managers, in work and out of it, Sweet confirmed that Brabin, who won Conference Manager Of The Year when at Cambridge United, was always first choice.

He continued: “One thing that we’re trying to achieve is effectively minimal disruption, because we do genuinely feel there’s not a lot wrong.

“Everyone involved in the club who know the team and the squad, does believe they are capable enough and can achieve what we want to achieve this season.

“Did we have an option to recruit another manager from outside? Yes. But you know what, it would be the same as last time we made a change.

“We had 150 applications and we could probably do it more quickly this time, as we interviewed some of them last time, but we’ve got a manager here.

“One of the reasons why Gary Brabin was brought in alongside Richard Money is because he has strong management potential and he’s now been given the opportunity to prove his worth.”

Brabin, who joined Luton as chief scout before being promoted to assistant manager at the end of last season, added: “Looking at the last month, I don’t think we were going in the right direction anyway, Richard will be the first to admit that.

“We all felt we needed a change. Between Richard and Gary they think there needs to be a change of manager.

“It’s easy for me when I wasn’t making the decisions (at Southport) to criticise Richard. He’s had my support from day one, as I’m sure I’ll have his.

“It was a poor performance. Yes I would have done things differently, but that wouldn’t have necessarily meant it would have worked. I’m going to change what I see fit and the most important thing for me is focusing on getting us promotion.”