‘If anyone can, we can’: Luton Town prepare for life in the Premier League

A s bank holiday weekends go, this one will surely prove tricky for Luton Town supporters to top. On Saturday, they returned, after a Wembley penalty shootout, to the top table of English football for the first time since 1992, and on Sunday the town’s colourful carnival took centre stage.

Monday? A promotion parade at St George’s Square, where a frenzied atmosphere is a given. On Thursday, the players are set to ramp up the celebrations by flying to Las Vegas.

On and off over the past couple of years, Gary Sweet, the Luton chief executive, has had his head buried in the Premier League handbook, taking a particular interest in Rule K, which details the ground regulations the club has 11 weeks to comply with. It is what could be termed a quality problem. “We have no complaints about that,” he says. “If anyone can do it, we can.”

Twenty years on from posting a rallying call on the Luton Outlaws message board – when the club was toiling in the fourth tier and financially precarious, which triggered the founding of the Luton Town Supporters Trust – Sweet, a lifelong fan, is relishing the responsibility of getting Kenilworth Road, capacity 10,356, ready to welcome the elite. He has already promised that Erling Haaland and the other Premier League superstars will walk through a “shit entrance” at the ground.

Nine years ago, the club was in the fifth tier of English football, the National League. Supporters will doubtless have marked the Premier League fixture release date on 15 June. “I am looking forward to Luton away,” says a Liverpool fan caught up in the thoroughfare as thousands of Luton supporters headed home from Wembley on the metropolitan line on Saturday night.

Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu, who joined Luton in non-league