Luton won't be quite at full strength for Preston visit

Luton boss Nathan Jones has confirmed he won’t quite have a full strength squad to choose from when picking his first side for a competitive clash since returning to Kenilworth Road against Preston North End on Saturday.

Long-term absentees Brendan Galloway and Eunan O'Lane remain out, but they might be joined on the sidelines by a few of Town's other first team players.

Although giving nothing away, when asked about the condition of the squad, Jones said: “There’s one or two little things, one or two coming back, everyone’s training, but there’s one or two who are not quite ready yet as they’ve not quite had enough training as they either had niggles before I got here, or have picked them up.

“So we’re not far off a full squad to choose from, there’s just one or two lacking the sharpness and the match fitness to be able to be considered to start.

“It’s as good as it can be, it’s a short mini pre-season if you like.

"Three and a half weeks I’ve been in, the first week we were small groups and then we’ve had three weeks to work with them, so we’ve had a little bit of a microwave one if you like.

"But they’ve all worked very hard, all been responsive, I knew that that’s the group they are anyway, so we’re in as good a shape as we can be.”

Jones did pick a strong-looking side to face Brentford in a practice match on Tuesday afternoon, with James Collins, Callum McManaman, Danny Hylton and Luke Bolton all scoring, while Chelsea on-loan midfielder Izzy Brown featured too.

The boss was happy to get much-needed minutes into his squad after a game against Oxford had been called off on Saturday, as he continued: “Everyone got through that, that was a vital one, as we had a game arranged for the Saturday, but we couldn't actually fulfill that fixture because of outside influences.

"So we had to arrange one and we did. It was a very good game against Brentford as you always know what you're going to go get when you play them, so it was much-needed.

"You see where players are, what kind of fitness, sharpness, mentality they have.

"It’s vital to do that, we’ve had in-house games, you see players flourish, some don’t do quite well, it’s totally different when it’s outside opposition.

"I know every single one of the players pretty much and worked with the majority, about 80 per cent of them.

"The others I know very, very well, so it’s a squad I know well and that was one of the big things for coming back.”