Town boss hopes Hatters' defensive duo aren't out for too long

Hatters boss Rob Edwards is hopeful that defender Reece Burke isn’t out for too long after he had to go off during Saturday’s 1-0 victory at Birmingham City with a groin problem.

The 26-year-old had been starting his sixth league game in a row for the Hatters, only the second time he had done that since joining in the summer of 2021, that time between February and March 2022, lasting only 23 minutes of a 4-0 win over Preston in the final contest.

However, he also couldn’t get through the fixture at St Andrew’s, substituted with 10 minutes of the second half gone for midfielder Allan Campbell after pulling up following stretching for a challenge by the corner flag.

It meant that with Tom Lockyer suspended and both Sonny Bradley and Dan Potts injured, that Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu dropped into the back three as Luton still managed to keep their clean sheet intact.

Although Burke is now a major doubt for tonight’s rearranged game against Millwall, Edwards said: “We believe in the lads that we’ve got.

“Sonny’s nearly back, he travelled down today (Saturday) with Locks to come and be around the lads which I think is fantastic and we’ve got Locks back for Tuesday as well.

“You don’t want to lose anyone, we’ll assess Burkey and see how he is.

“He’s been magnificent for us on this run recently, a really important player for us and hopefully he won’t be out too long.

“He just felt his groin a little bit, I’m not sure exactly when.

"He’s another one we’ll just have to see how he is.”

Fellow defender Dan Potts had been named in the match-day squad at Birmingham, only to pull out just before kick-off, his place on the bench going to Louie Watson.

On the reasons behind that, Edwards added: “He just felt his hamstring in the warm up.

"He was striding out and just didn't feel he was able to sprint.

"We knew if we were going to need him, we were going to need him to sprint as well, so we’ll have to assess him and see where he's at, hopefully he’s not going to be too bad.

“We’ve got to rally like we did here.

"We lost Pottsy in the warm-up, we lost Burkey during the game, Pelly goes in at right centre back and we still managed to grind it out.

"That’s what we do here and we’ll continue to do that.”