It was a call that will remain with Mick Harford for the rest of his life. Manager of Luton Town in the summer of 2008, Harford was at Warwick University doing an FA diploma, keeping an eye on his phone. That day, he was waiting to discover the verdict of a Football League investigation into financial issues, which had blighted Luton for a decade.
Only a week previously, the cash-strapped Hatters – preparing for a season in League Two after back-to-back relegations – had been hit with a 10-point deduction after the FA found the team’s former directors guilty of misconduct over payments made to agents. Today, Harford was braced for more bad news, but not quite to this extent.
Luton had been deducted a further 20 points, the most severe punishment handed out by the Football League, because of a failure to secure an insolvency agreement that satisfied HMRC. A month before the season had even started, a combined 30-point shortfall left them staring another relegation in the face, and a depressing drop into non-league for the first time in 89 years.
“It was a sad day,” Harford tells FFT now. “As a club, we believed we could overcome it. When you look back, they should have just relegated us, so we could start afresh. It was a massive burden to carry 30 points.”
Rotherham and Bournemouth were both hit with 17-point deductions in the same division that year but survived – the latter after appointing Eddie Howe as manager mid-season, setting them on a path that took them all the way to the Premier League.
For Luton, 30 points was too much to claw back – they finished bottom, relegated after a draw at home to Chesterfield, with four games to play. Until 2014, for five seasons, they remained marooned in the Conference.
Few expected what happened next. On May 27, 2023, against Coventry City at Wembley, came a fourth promotion in nine years, and ascension to the Premier League. After 31 years away, Luton Town had returned to the top flight of English football.
