Collins ready to fight to remain a Championship player

Town striker James Collins is, like club captain Sonny Bradley, desperate to make sure his Championship career isn’t limited to just the one season.

The 29-year-old has worked his way up to the second tier of English football after being released by Aston Villa in January 2011, without making a first team appearance.

He dropped down the leagues to play for Shrewsbury Town, Swindon Town. Northampton Town and Crawley, plus having a spell in Scotland with Hibernian, before moving to Kenilworth Road in June 2017.

Back-to-back promotions has seen Collins not only a regular for the Hatters in the Championship with 11 goals to his name, but an international football as well, winning four Ireland caps.

With Luton now facing a real battle to stay up this season, both Bradley and Collins have spoken about their determination to ensure that happens, as the attacker said: “I can’t speak for the rest of the lads but I can definitely echo that personally because me and Sonny have probably had quite a similar route.

"We played at League Two and League One level most of our careers and we’ve worked so hard to get to the Championship and I think now is our chance to stay in it.

“We have got to fight every day, every game to make sure that is the case by the end of the season.

“You are in the position you are by right.

"We’re in the bottom three now because obviously we haven’t done as well as we’d hoped.

"We’ve only got ourselves now to try and get out of it and if we do stay up then we have earned that by playing the games, not by anybody keeping us in the league because of the pandemic.

"Again, if we go down then we go down by right.”

To ensure Luton aren't back in League One next season, Town must win a number of their remaining nine games to catch the chasing pack, who they already trail by six points, seven in reality with a poor goal difference.

Ahead of the season being suspended due to the coronavirus back in March, the Hatters were on course to finish the campaign strongly, with three victories and two draws from six games, but unfortunately that counts for nothing now according to Collins.

He continued: "It’s completely gone, as a lot of things have happened since then.

"Obviously, the manager (Graeme Jones) going and lads having 10 weeks off, but we’ve got to hit the ground running on Saturday, try and find a bit of form, try to get some wins on the board and try to get as many points as we can.

"I think the form we should leading up to the break, it did show we are capable of it."

After this afternoon's clash with Preston, Town then have a week off before travelling to Swansea City next Saturday and playing eight matches in 26 games.

It'll be a difficult test for the players, as Collins stated: "It’s a tough run-in, but it's the same for everyone, it’s not just Luton Town who are playing Saturday, Tuesday, Saturday, Tuesday, it’s everyone in the league.

"I think we’ve got a good enough squad to manage it and it’s going to be testing, but the teams that handle that the best are going to win the most games."

Luton go into the run-in with a familiar face at the helm, with former boss Nathan Jones reappointed last month.

It was the Welshman who signed Collins back in 2017 and although he has only had three weeks with the players on the training ground, the forward thinks they look in good shape after returning from 10 weeks away.

He added: "It’s been really good, the tempo has been really high.

"The quality with, I say the new manager, but the gaffer coming back, the first week was more testing and fitness stuff and then the last couple of weeks it's been more games between ourselves and more short, sharp stuff.

"All the lads have looked after themselves over the break, because the fitness tests stated that.

"Everyone looks in good shape and everyone’s in good spirits.

"Match fitness is different to training, but I think we’ll be ready to go on Saturday.

"We all know how Nathan likes to play, we’re a fit group and we know our best form of attack is to get the ball back as quickly as possible and I think nothing will change there."