Little ol’ Luton are bouncing back up like never before

In the 2012/13 season, Luton Town finished seventh in the football conference.

Thirty years earlier, David Pleat was skipping across the Maine Road pitch — half-Socrates, half-kangaroo — after that famous last-day great escape when Luton stayed in the top flight and Manchester City were relegated.

For the Hatters, the eighties were suited and booted. Two FA Cup semi-finals, three top ten Division One finishes and League Cup winners in 1988, handing them their first major silverware. Mick Harford, Ricky Hill, David Preece, Mal Donaghy, the Stein brothers. Ah, the Stein brothers. A golden era.

Yet, there they were in 2013, on a coach home from a 3-1 win at Stockport, another season in non-league looming. However, step away from the Kleenex. This is not a sob story. No tissues required.

From that moment to this very day, this football club has made progress in every single season bar one, and that’s hardly worth mentioning. They won promotion back to the Football League in 2014, as champions, then finished eighth and 11th in League Two in the next two seasons. Hardly a nosedive.

Read this and don’t weep. Fourth in League Two, second in League Two, first in League One, 19th in the Championship, 12th in the Championship and, as they welcome Millwall tomorrow with just eight games to go, they are in third place in the second tier.

Remove your hat, Luton Town, and take a bow. Hold on, hold on. There must be a catch. Sugar daddy? Big investor using the club as a plaything? Wrong.

These days, working out football budgets is akin to deciphering Donald Trump’s tax returns, so I asked Price of Football podcast host Keiran McGuire.

He said: ‘Their budget is so small only recently have they had to publish full accounts. They are competing