Awford targets an FA Youth Cup upset for Luton against Hammers

Luton’s U18s will be going all out to engineer an FA Youth Cup upset after being drawn at home to top flight side West Ham United in the third round of the competition last week.

Town will take on the three-time winners, who are managed by Kevin Keen and ply their trade in the U18 Premier League South, at a date yet to be arranged, although it must be before Saturday, December 12.

The Hatters have fared well in recent years, reaching the quarter-finals in 2016, as Academy & Development manager Andy Awford said: “We have what we call red flag games and that will be one.

“You’d probably take a result over a performance in the FA Youth Cup, that is probably the one and only time we would do that.

“We want to win every game that we go into, of course we do, but the FA Youth Cup has that little bit of tradition and West Ham are an established Category One side and they will be a very, very good outfit, no doubt about that.

“They’ll come with their first 11 no doubt and it will be a very, very tough game, arguably our toughest game of the season.

“So we’ll have to be at our very best to get anything out of the game and you hope that West Ham maybe have a slight off night, there’s a little bit of a leveller and we get a little bit of luck as well.

“All we can ask of the players is to give their absolute all which they will, be prepared, attack the game in the right manner and play our way, then what will be will be.

“It’s a tough draw to get a Premier League Category One side, but then again, it’s a great opportunity for our players to test themselves against higher opposition and that’s what we want.

“We want them to be tested at all times and it will be great for our players to see if West Ham are a different level, they might not be, let’s wait and see.

“We’ll give them respect, but we won’t show them too much respect, as we’ll want to make a competitive game of it no doubt.”

Town’s young guns can go into the tie full of confidence sitting top of their EFL Youth Alliance South East League after taking 18 points from their opening nine games.

Awford continued: “They’ve picked results up, I would say a couple of the performances we’ve been slightly fortunate to get results, in my opinion, but after nine games, the table doesn’t lie.

“It’s now trying to maintain that position at the top of the league, but as always, I’m a greedy academy manager.

“It’s not just the winning that I want, it’s the performance of the individual players that I want that then we can push them through into the 21s and hopefully into the first team.

“That will be and always will be the goal.

“We want to win every single football match that we play as an academy, however, winning for an academy is getting a player through, not winning a league.

“If you can get both then happy days, that would be fantastic.

“Credit to the boys, they’ve had a good start to the year.

"It was difficult coming off the back of the lockdown, different environment, different this, different that, but they’ve been a credit to the football club and got some good results out of the games programme so far.”

When asked if he thought there were any in Luton’s current crop that looked to possess the talent needed to make it into the first team, Awford added: “You’ve always got one or two in each age group that you’ve got eyes on.

"That’s not being disrespectful to anybody else in the group, but there are players at every group right the way through that we’re quite excited about.

“Sometimes they can go in cycles a little bit, sometimes you get three or four out of one group, then you might not get any, then you might get one and then another three or four come again, so this current group is doing well at the moment."