Can Luton, the club that football forgot, find salvation in the FA Cup?
Fabio Capello will today take a crash course in the other side of English football. And what better place could there be to learn about the haves and the have-nots of the game in his adopted country than the spartan stands of Kenilworth Road, where lowly Luton Town, of League One, take on lofty Liverpool, of the Premier League, in the FA Cup third round?
As Capello's Football Association limousine negotiates the narrow, terraced streets around the run-down stadium before the Italian who is England's new coach finds that he needs to peer round pillars to watch the action, he will surely question whether this is the same English game he has been watching on television these past few years and with which he has apparently been so in love. He might also ask a few questions about what happened to cash-strapped, strife-torn Luton, whom he will remember as something of a force in the English game 20 years ago when they won the League Cup and reached FA Cup semi-finals. Before, that is, the game here took off and left them behind. Before they became the club that football forgot.
"This club has rested on its laurels too much, allowed too many people to pass them by," laments manager Kevin Blackwell. "It's just been stuck in a time-warp."
Blackwell was born in the town and raised on the Kenilworth Road terraces.
He remembers being passed down to the front when he was a small boy in the Malcolm Macdonald era of the late Sixties and early Seventies, when Britain's best-loved comedian, Eric Morecambe, a resident of nearby Harpenden and a director of the club, gave Luton Town a higher profile.
After enjoyable days under David Pleat and the club's Cup exploits of the Eighties, Luton's misfortune was to be relegated the season before the start of the Premier League, with its TV-supplied millions.
It seemed Mike Newell might be leading them back to the top flight a few seasons ago.
As a Championship club, they even led Liverpool 3-1 in an astonishing FA Cup-tie two years ago before Rafael Benitez's side won 5-3 and went on to win the trophy.
But it was another false dawn and they quickly became another of the game's Icarus clubs, flying too close to the sun.
Liverpool may have their problems with American owners worrying about funding a new stadium and at odds with Benitez over the money available for buying players,but Luton would gladly exchange circumstances.
"That would be nice to see, a job swap for 12 months," muses Blackwell.
Having racked up considerable debt chasing a place in the Premier League, their best players, men such as Curtis Davies, Steve Howard and Carlos Edwards, had to be sold when the dream failed to materialise.
Newell grew discontented, amid it all speaking out about bungs in the game as well as the state of the club.
He was sacked last March, to be replaced with Blackwell, previously manager of Leeds United, also during dark financial days. But Blackwell arrived too late to prevent relegation to League One.
A new chairman arrived in David Pinkney,a local businessman and parttime racing driver.
He promised investment and a five-year plan to move the club to a desperately-needed new stadium but enthusiasm waned when he found money was haemorrhaging and he was unable to stop the bleeding.
On top, Luton were hit by more than 50 FA charges relating to previous transfer dealings, with chairman Bill Tomlins and three other directors, all now departed, cited along with a clutch of agents.
By mid-November, with the club facing a potential £3.8million lawsuit from Newell for wrongful dismissal, Pinkney decided he had had enough and took the club into administration, meaning a 10-point deduction that plunged Luton into the relegation zone.
All overnight stays for away games were stopped,Blackwell's scouting staff were sacked and mobile phone use was halted.
Two loan players were even refused an evening meal and then turfed out of their hotel, turning up for training with their suitcases until someone from the club was dispatched to pay the bill.
Brendan Guilfoyle,who had been the administrator at Leeds, was called in to do the same job at Luton.
Blackwell, still at Leeds when Guilfoyle's insolvency company arrived to investigate where it had all gone wrong in the Peter Ridsdale era, was not exactly delighted to see him again.
"There's a lot of swearing in football, isn't there?" says Guilfoyle. "When Kevin saw me at Luton, he said, 'Not you.I hope you're not going to stuff me again.' Or words to that effect."
Guilfoyle was surprised by what he found. "Not by the level of debt, which is around £4m, with £2.5m of that due to the Inland Revenue, and very low when you compare clubs like Coventry and Leeds. But I was surprised by the losses of £3m to £4m every year. And the wage bill of £3.6m."
November's wages went unpaid but an unexpected victory over Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup second round,coupled with the Liverpool draw and live TV money, means some of the projected revenue of around £350,000 could go into paying the players 55 per cent of their wages in December.
And this month? Pinkney's promise to fund the trading loss runs out. Cup windfalls are unlikely to continue.
The club may have to sell promising assets such as goalkeeper Dean Brill, mdefender Chris Coyne and midfield players David Bell, David Edwards and Matt Spring.
Though he has held off thus far, the administrator will have to accept bids, no matter how derisory. Unless...
Tomorrow at 5pm is the deadline for potential new owners to declare bids.
"Four parties have been conducting due diligence but realistically there are two shaping up and who have shown proof of funds," says Guilfoyle.
One — either a consortium of local businessmen or another embracing American money — will be chosen as preferred bidders and he hopes to persuade them to fund the club while they negotiate an agreement to pay off creditors a percentage of the debts.
Nick Owen, president of the Luton Town Supporters' Association, could even be part of a new consortium.
Yes, that Nick Owen,once of breakfast television and now a presenter with the BBC in Birmingham.
"If the group gets in that I would like to get in, it will be extremely exciting for the club," he says. The most exciting thing that could happen to Luton — and the most necessary — is a new stadium.
The facilities at Kenilworth Road are so basic they deter supporters and yield little income.
"This will be my 50th year supporting the club," says Owen, "and I can remember back then as a boy reading headline in the Evening Standard saying: 'Luton Town To Build Country's Best Stadium.' It was a 50,000-capacity on green belt land but it was turned down.
"We have a good location and catchment area, with many smaller towns around us, just off the M1 30 miles from London,with an airport and rail links. So many people tell me they would come to watch Luton if they could park, see properly and be comfortable. We have to do something."
Blackwell, on borrowed time and hoping new owners want to retain him, agrees.
"This town, this club, could be anything they want to be. But we have not been as aggressive as we should have been."
That much can be seen by the composition of Luton crowds. Though the club exist in a predominantly Asian area, few faces from that community are inside the ground on match days.
With gates around 6,000,neither have they sold their young,spirited side — bolstered by experienced campaigners such as Chris Perry, once of Wimbledon and Tottenham,and Don Hutchison — to the rest of the community.
"We are not going to go out there and not perform just because we're not getting paid. We're professionals," says Hutchison, once of Liverpool, now 36 and likely to be on Luton's bench today.
"This club is struggling but if you perform to your best someone else might think you have enough talent to play for them. Then if someone buys you, that might help this club survive. When you go on the football field you forget everything anyway.
"I'm lucky to have done well out of the game but some of the young lads have got mortgages to pay. They might not be on great money and it's tough for them. But 99 per cent play for the love of the game anyway and they will get paid eventually."
A draw or even an unlikely win today before a capacity crowd of over 10,000 would lift spirits. Steven Gerrard's absence makes that a little less fanciful but Hutchison says: "I've told the boys my ideal scenario would be a draw.
"Financially it would be good for the club. I think we can do it.We proved in our performance against Everton in the Carling Cup that if we put in the same attitude and desire and Liverpool have an off day we'll be in with a shout."
A good result could even make Luton a more attractive purchase.
Who knows, perhaps Fabio Capello will be so impressed by this slice of Olde Englishe Football, he will make a late offer.
His reputed salary of around £6m a year would be more than enough to bail them out.