Luton Town and the legendary journey

In the long history of English football, there are many cases of clubs that, like Bournemouth or Brighton & Hove Albion, managed to climb several divisions in a few seasons, going from the third or fourth tier of football in England to the Premier League. On the other hand, we have the opposite case: clubs that went from playing in the Premier League or even participating in European competitions to playing in several lower categories, such as Portsmouth or Bolton Wanderers.

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However, there are very few clubs that can claim to have taken the whole journey from the Premier League to the bottom of the Football League and then back to the Premier League in around 30 years and that’s what Luton Town did. The Hatters are a particular club that will stand out in an interesting way among the 20 teams in the first tier of English football.

This is our story.

The first club to go from non-league to the Premier League! 🧡#COVLUT | #COYH pic.twitter.com/n2NvnBiURl

— Luton Town FC (@LutonTown) May 27, 2023

It’s also worth pointing out that the club belongs to Luton Town Football Club 2020 Limited, which is a supporter-owned company that has the majority of shares in Luton, something that differs from most Premier League clubs that are owned by foreign capital.

Luton was a club that was a part of the old First Division, which was the first tier of England before 1992 during part of the 1950s and in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The club was relegated to the second tier in the 1991-92 season, which was the last before the birth of the Premier League, which deprived them of playing that first season of the new English top-tier competition. Luton began a progressive but fairly constant decline until they fell into the fourth tier where they stayed for one season and began a comeback that led them to the Championship.

The Football Association and the EFL discovered irregularities in the management of the institution and this led to a series of sanctions that ended with the club in the National League, which has been the fifth tier of English football, that is, the category immediately below the EFL League Two. Luton Town spent 5 years in the category until in 2014 they managed to return to the Football League, following a serious project that showed improvement each season until in 2018 they reached promotion to League One and only one year later to the Championship.

In their first season in the second tier, they avoided relegation finishing in 19th place, then in the second one they finished in 12th position, and in the third in 6th position. Finally, in the 2022-23 season, Luton Town completed the feat to return to the first tier after the victory against Sunderland and Coventry City in the promotion play-offs. This made the club the first to manage to play at the top level of English football after being dropped to the fifth tier.

As an additional fun fact, Luton Town’s stadium, Kenilworth Road, is a bit different from the big Premier League club stadiums that we are used to since its location is very integrated into the town of Luton to the point that access is through a neighborhood patio in the area. In fact, the front of the stadium looks like another building in the city that does not suggest that there is a stadium in that place. Anyway, just one particularity that Luton Town is going to bring to the elitist Premier League.

Welcome to the Premier League, @LutonTown! 👋 pic.twitter.com/eL5FbfEN8u

— Premier League (@premierleague) May 27, 2023