Town boss is determined to put his own stamp on things at Luton after getting to work with returning squad for the first time

New Town manager Rob Edwards is determined to put his own stamp on things at Kenilworth Road after getting to work with his new squad for the first time this morning.

After a 10 day break following an exhausting schedule in the Championship to fit a first ever winter World Cup in, the Luton players were back at the Brache this morning where they were greeted by three new faces in Edwards and his two assistants Paul Trollope and Richie Kyle.

With Edwards having been named as Southampton-bound Nathan Jones’ replacement when the Town players were away on their holidays, he inherits a team that doesn’t need major surgery at all, sitting 10th in the second tier, with a highly competitive squad put in place by his predecessor.

The former Forest Green and Watford chief be looking to build on what he already has, while putting his own ideas across too, as on how his first meeting with everyone went, he said: “It’s probably better to ask other people, but I feel it went well, I feel that we got a good response from the lads.

“They were all sitting there very attentively, it’s important not to go on as you don’t want to lose anyone.

"We wanted to try and keep the message simple, try and come across with some humility because we recognise how well they’ve done.

“But we’re in a position now where there is going to be new voices and we’re going to want to at some stage put our stamp on it as well, while recognising the things that the lads do really, really well.

“It was a good meeting and straight after that on to the grass and that was excellent as well, so it’s been a really positive first day.”

Edwards will get the chance to spend some quality time with his new players this week as the Hatters are heading away for a warm weather training camp on Saturday, before building up to their restart at Middlesbrough on December 10, with a behind closed doors friendly a week beforehand.

The new manager doesn’t expect any drastic drop in fitness levels though, adding: “They’ve had some time off but they’ve also been doing work while they’ve been away from here as well.

"They’ve been in constant contact with the S and C (strength and conditioning) staff and they’ve been able to feed back on a lot of their GPS stuff, so we’ve been able to monitor it and the guys have been able to monitor what they’ve done when they’ve been away as well.

"It’s been important for them to have a breather and have a rest as the games have been really intense.

"So they’ve had a bit of time off, but they’ve been able to keep fit and I think if you ask most players these days, normally as they’re different to what players were 20 years ago, they’re in good nick.

"They were in good nick out there in training today, but we’ve got to work with the players, we’ve got to listen to the players, we’ve got to work with the staff.

"We can push now, we’ve got to be sensible with it, but we’ve got to make sure we hit that sweet spot where we’re not over-cooking them, but they can’t be undercooked either.

"So we’ve got to make sure when we go into that Middlesbrough game in a few weeks time that we’re ready to run, as that’s the big strength for our lads.

"As well as the qualities they’ve got, they work really, really hard, so we’ll be working, we’ll be pushing in training, we can do that, they’re resilient.”