The English Premier League season 2023/2024 started on August 11, 8 and lasted until May 2023, 19 with 5 teams that played in the Premier League last season and 2024 newly promoted rookies, including Luton. Town is quite unique.
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| Keniworth Road, home of the Luton Town team - the smallest and oldest football field with 120 years old in the current Premier League |
• FROM “NO RANGE” TO EXCEPTIONAL
The 17 teams playing in the English Premier League in the 2022/2023 season and continuing to play in the 2023/2024 Premier League in order of points ranking from high to low are Manchester City, Arsenal, Manchester United, Newcastle, Liver-pool, Brighton, Aston Villa, Tottenham, Brentford, Fulham, Crystal Palace, Chelsea, Wolveshampton, West Ham, Bournemoth, Nottingham Forest and Eveton.
The 3 teams that have to be relegated to the Championship this season are Leicester, Leeds and Southampton. Replacing these three relegated teams in the Premier League are three newly promoted teams from the Championship including Burnley (first in the Championship), Sheffield United (second in the Championship) and Luton Town (for a ticket), of which two teams are Burnley and Sheffield United. been up and down the Premier League, only Luton Town has been promoted to the Premier League for the first time with many unique things.
Up and down in football seems to be a normal story, especially in a competition as competitive as the Premier League, unless the team just won the championship and then suffered relegation. Football, or sport in general, depends a lot on the performance of the players, players and coaching staff, however, there is always something called class. The big teams always have their own class, as the once-famous Premier League coach Alex Ferguson once said "Form is temporary, class is forever", typically the top teams in the Premier League. League like Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City… even if they play a few matches in a season, they still come to the top at the end. The worst in the last Premier League season is probably Chelsea – a top British team, they had to finish the season in 12th place. And Leicester, although once won the 2016 Premier League, maybe because Their temporary form at that time helped them win the championship, but then they did not invest enough resources to maintain the position they had, and then fell into the relegation situation as they are now.
But the promotion of Luton Town in this year's Premier League season is a unique story, rare in modern times. Previously, in 2016, when Leicester City won the Premier League, it caused a great shock to the English football village because it was like a story of "an elephant through the eye of a needle". Luton Town this year is equally rare, when they have been relegated to an unranked position in English football, diving into movement football, but then have gone from "no rank" to promotion. straight to the top.
Like many teams in England, Luton Town also has a long history of playing football. Founded in 1885, this team is known as "The Hatters and Hatters" because it is associated with the town of Lu-ton in Bedfordshire, England, specializing in making and selling hats.
However, throughout its 138 years of existence, this team has faced its biggest rival is financial problems. Lack of money, lack of investment, they had to "stop playing" many times even though they only played in the low leagues in the English football system. There was a time when this team reached the First Division, it was the 1982/1983 season, then relegated to the Second Division and played here. In the 2008/2009 Second Division season due to insufficient financial resources, this team was deducted points, forced to be relegated to Fifth - a division that is no longer ranked in English football, equivalent to a top team. surge.
Playing in the movement ranking for 5 years, through the door to the national cups where domestic teams all competed, Luton Town found its way back to the English ranked leagues in the 2014/2015 season. then quickly rose to the Championship (second only to the Premier League) in the 2019/2020 season after a 12-year absence from this tournament.
And it doesn't stop here. The promotion came to Luton Town quickly. In the 2021/2022 season, they won the right to compete for a play-off ticket to advance to the Premier League but were defeated by Huddersfield Town in the semi-finals. No problem, last season 2022/2023, at the Championship they continued to enter the position to compete for tickets to return and this time they defeated both Sunderland and Coventry City teams in the semi-finals and final to take the second place. three, enough to guarantee them a ticket for the first time in their history to play in the Premier League.
• DIFFICULTIES
Behind the joy of going to the top in its fairy tale, Luton Town will face many difficulties on this pressurized playing field.
It's still a long financial story ahead, although Luton Town seems to have hit the jackpot when it won a huge amount of money beyond expectations thanks to the promotion. A British newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, wrote that "The 138-year history of this club has witnessed an unprecedented miracle when it came to the Premier League and received more than £200 million in cash. Round 3 of the season”.
However, this amount of money looks huge for a small team like Luton Town but it is really nothing for the big teams in the Premier League. Like Arsenal, for example, after finishing second in the Premier League, this season, they have become the most expensive team in England when spending £ 255 million on the player transfer market as of August 10. , in which, only the money for Deslan Rice when bought from West Ham, this team spent 8 million pounds. Of course, Arsenal also sold off players in their squad to earn £ 128 million. And other teams play equally big as Tottenham spent £ 37 million to buy players, Manchester United team also spent £ 213 million to buy players. If you calculate the money, many players in the big teams are worth more than a Luton Town team today.
Therefore, Luton Town coach Rob Edward shared that: "I know we are the best candidate for the relegation ticket. Most of the teams promoted through the pick-up round will be relegated after one season. I'm not upset with what people predict, it's just the standard they impose on Luton. We are one of the smallest teams ever promoted. The team has never participated in the Premier League before. It's like David versus Goliath. But we want to enjoy this season.”
The first thing that Luton Town needs to do for this Premier League season is to increase quality players. However, with limited resources and the current high-quality player market, it is difficult for them. One possible solution for this team is to find players who have a bit of a reputation but are past their peak, as the mid-tier Premier League teams have been doing for so long.
But the most difficult thing for Luton Town is having to both play and spend money to build a new stadium because the team's playing field is now very small, with only 10.356 seats to be exact - the smallest of any stadium in the Premier League. In fact, the Keniworth Road yard where they play today is a very old, classic yard with an age of about… 120 years. This yard is associated with the ups and downs of the team's history and has not been renovated and upgraded so far, like a backyard with rows of houses around, the road to the yard is very narrow. This team has long wanted to build a new football field in a more convenient place in their city, but the table came up and had to stop due to many reasons including not having enough money.
Recently, with the continuous promotion of Luton Town, the Board of Directors of this team decided to accelerate the construction of a new football field in the city center and the number of seats from over 10 in the old stadium to over 17.500. new yard accommodation and can be expanded up to 23 seats when needed. A recent decision of the Board of Directors said that the new football field will be raised to 19.500 seats, with 4.000 accompanying stands, very modest compared to the pitches of the current big teams in England. However, it will take more than 3 years, until 2026 to complete the new yard. This means, Luton Town still has to continue to use the old yard for a long time and this team to play in the Premier League has to spend over tens of millions of pounds here to upgrade the yard. .
