The Town finally celebrated their first win away from home since November at Wycombe on Saturday – which, given their unbeatable record at Adams Park feels like a home game anyway.
But tonight the Hatters return to their true home as Exeter City are the visitors to Kenilworth Road with more important League One points up for grabs.
Can the Town make it back-to-back wins and move further up the table? Let’s get into it.
City’s struggles
The Grecians arrive in Bedfordshire tonight as one of the most out of form teams in the country.
It’s 11 League One games without a win for Exeter coming into tonight (D6, L5), with City losing four of their last five. They’ve also found it difficult to keep goals out, too, conceding 23 times during this winless streak.
All seems well after their 3-1 win at Port Vale at the end of January, which lifted City into 10th in the table, six points off the play-offs.
But since then, they’ve lost their manager, Gary Caldwell, to Wigan, and now find themselves 18th and six points above the bottom four.
Despite their recent troubles, the Town will need to be wary of the talents of Jayden Wareham. The former Chelsea youngster has hit 19 goals in 44 games this season in all competitions and only two players have scored more than him in League One this season.
Tickets, please
Want to gets down to Kenilworth Road tonight and take it all in under the lights?
Tickets remain on sale and you can buy them just be clicking here. Simple.
Haven’t we met before?
So, there’s this website. Hatters Heritage. You might have heard of it. Got information and line-ups of every single game we’ve ever played. Scans of every programme and photos of every player, too.
Visiting their website will give you the complete record of all our meetings with the Grecians, which goes back to our first game with them all the way back to our first meeting in 1908.
The Town lost that first game 2-1 in Devon but in the intervening years Hatters teams have held the upper hand.
That record is especially strong on home soil, with the Town winning 21 of the 34 meetings in Bedfordshire, including three of the last four. The two met here earlier in the campaign in the Vertu Trophy. Exeter won the League One meeting on New Year’s Day.
Exeter’s last win came in April 2015 when, despite goals from Luke Guttridge and Mark Cullen, the Hatters went down 3-2 in League Two.
In charge
Tonight’s referee, Alex Chilowicz, is not your normal EFL whistler. Born in New Jersey, he plays the saxophone, studied jazz at university, has credits on Broadway, and, this season, has shown 89 yellow cards to professional footballers this season. It will be the American’s second visit to Kenilworth Road this term having overseen our win over Brighton Under-21s in the Vertu Trophy in October.
OTD
St Patrick’s Day is not a great day in the recent history books for the Hatters.
Since beating Wolves at Molineux in the top-flight in 1956 the Town have gone the next 70 years winning just once on 17th March – that came in 2009 with a 2-1 win over Grimsby in the minus-30 season with Asa Hall (pictured) and Mark Bower on target.
In the last 11 games the Town have scored five goals, and their last two have seen us play Newport at Rodney Parade twice, in 2015 (L 0-1) and 2019 (D 1-1).
Perhaps the biggest game we’ve played on this day came in 1973 when we lost an FA Cup quarter-final at Sunderland. The Black Cats would go on and lift the trophy.
Also happy birthday to former Hatters Brendan Galloway, Gary Waddock, Simon Sluga and Julian Watts (he’s electric).
Team news
The Hatters will check on the fitness of Nahki Wells after he went off with what looked like a hamstring injury in Saturday’s win at Wycombe.
A doubt remains over fellow striker Ali Al-Hamadi but Elijah Adebayo featured for nine minutes at the end of the win at Adams Park and is likely to be named among the Town substitutes once more.
Tune in, turn on.
Simon Pitts will be, as ever, on the mic on LTFC+ from his lofty position on the world’s longest, wettest and windiest football stadium gantries this evening.
If you’re overseas and want to watch the game, it’s £10. Just want audio? It’s available anywhere, and it’s just £2.50 for the pleasure. Clicking here gives you those possibilities.
You can also follow our social media channels for live updates as they happen, plus photos and behind-the-scenes content during the 90 minutes. Stay on lutontown.co.uk post-match for a full report, post-match reaction and the all-important highlights.
And finally...don’t be THAT fan.
A reminder to all supporters, no matter who you are, how old or who you’re supporting, to go about your day with respect. We continue to support the Love Football, Protect the Game campaign.
Luton Town Football Club has committed in its customer charter to providing safe match-day experiences for all supporters regardless of age, gender, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation, and this applies equally to home and away fixtures.
In the event that any Luton supporters do make discriminatory chants, the Club will work with the police and football authorities to help identify such individuals. Any such fans would then face the strictest club sanctions, including football banning orders that would prevent them attending any matches, in addition to any criminal charges.
Furthermore, we would like to warn against pitch incursions and the use of pyrotechnics or missiles – including any type of object that is thrown onto the pitch during a match – which could lead to potential prosecution.
The Club can also be held responsible for the behaviour of its supporters, which could lead to substantial fines being imposed.
As a diverse and inclusive football club, we stand shoulder-to-shoulder with our fellow EFL clubs in supporting the FA’s ‘Love Football. Protect the Game’ campaign and call on all fans to enjoy the game in a positive spirit.
If you are offended by any discriminatory abuse of any kind at any of our games, you can report it by clicking HERE, or by contacting your nearest steward immediately.
Alternatively, email myvoice@lutontown.co.uk, or report the incident via Kick it Out's free, confidential reporting app on the App Store and Google Play.
We're all Luton.
Come on Luton!
What we’re liking this week
Oh what fun it is to see Luton win away
