Blues Face Premier League Luton at Colchester Tuesday, 25th Jul 2023 11:26 The Blues face Premier League Luton Town in their final UK-based friendly at Colchester United’s Jobserve Community Stadium this evening (KO 7.30pm). The game is being played at Colchester as both Town and the Hatters’ own grounds have been undergoing work this summer. Kieran McKenna’s men will be looking for a more positive result after the weekend 2-1 defeats at Cambridge United and Stevenage. “That’s definitely a game we’ve looked and said that that’s going to be a really good marker and a good challenge against a team who have been very successful in the Championship last year, but also the season before that as well,” McKenna said, speaking after the match at Broadhall Way. “We think that will be a good challenge for us. We’re looking forward to the game. They’ll recover their bodies from today and get ready for that one.” McKenna was quizzed on whether the line-up against Luton would hint at the team which will start against Sunderland on the opening day, Sunday 6 August. “No, to be honest,” he said. “I think there are some players that everyone with an interest could probably guess will play if they’re fit at the start of the season, no big surprises. “But we always plan a little bit for each individual team and we’ve started to look at Sunderland a little bit already, looking at their strengths and what we need to do well against them and where we’ll try to hurt them. “That’s a very different game, they’re a very different opponent to Luton and you’re still managing the training loads and their bodies and making sure that there’s no risk in terms of picking people for Tuesday night, and we have two more games that week as well. “I don’t think it’s at a point yet where we’re picking a team that we’re thinking is going go against Sunderland. “Of course, we’ll be trying to get more of the players on the pitch at the same time who we think are likely to start, but we plan to, as we have over the last 18 months, be adaptable game to game in terms of picking players with certain strengths to help us against different oppositions.”
Wes Burns (calf), Janoi Donacien (tendon), who was brought up in Luton and was a schoolboy with the Hatters, and Harry Clarke (tendon) again missed out on Saturday but McKenna was hopeful that the trio would be involved in the final pre-season matches. “They’re not far away,” he said. “If it was a league game, we probably could have pushed them. They’re all there or thereabouts and we’ll hopefully see at least one or two of them on Tuesday and we’d be hopeful that all of them will travel to Austria for the games next week.” Cameron Humphreys was absent on Saturday having suffered a concussion at Preston last Wednesday. Due to the related protocols, the young midfielder is not expected to be available for this week’s matches. Luton, who have just returned from a training camp in Slovenia, were last season’s surprise package, finishing third in the Championship and winning promotion to the Premier League for the first time - only nine years since they were in the National League - by beating Coventry 6-5 on penalties after a 1-1 draw in the play-off final at Wembley. Since going up, boss Rob Edwards has added added one-time Town trialist Chiedozie Ogbene from Rotherham, another wideman, Tahith Chong from Birmingham City, and centre-half Mads Andersen from Barnsley, while midfielder Marvelous Nakamba’s move from Aston Villa has been made permanent following last season’s loan. The Blues and Hatters last met competitively in the Carabao Cup in August 2019 at Kenilworth Road when the home side ran out 3-1 winners, Armando Dobra netting a debut goal for the visitors. The teams had faced one another two years previously in the same competition at the same venue when two David McGoldrick goals saw Town to a 2-0 victory. The last pre-season friendly betwen the teams was in July 2012 when the then-non-league side ran out 2-0 winners on their home turf against a Blues side featuring Massimo Luongo, who had just joined on loan from Spurs. Town will complete their pre-season programme with two 60-minute games against Bundesliga teams RB Leipzig and Werder Bremen on Friday at the Innsbruck Cup in Austria.
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