Luton Town are set to play top-tier football at officially the smallest ground in Premier League history during the 2023/24 season, but 20 years ago the Hatters had grand plans to move from their iconic Kenilworth Road ground.
When John Gurney bought Luton Town in 2003, he had ambitious ideas to build a 70,000-seater, multi-sport stadium next to the M1, with a removable pitch on stilts, and a Formula One track around the site.
Gurney also planned to rebrand the club London Luton and mooted the idea of merging with Wimbledon, shortly before the club made the move to Milton Keynes.
If that wasn’t enough, he also sacked popular manager Joe Kinnear, who’d led the Hatters back to the third tier, by letter. Luton fans threatened to boycott the club and avoid renewing season tickets in an attempt to force him out.
“We knew John Gurney from his days at Bedford Rugby Club, which wasn’t a happy time for them,” BBC Three Counties' Luton commentator Simon Oxley tells FourFourTwo. “There were warning signs as soon as he walked through the door.”
Now, Kenilworth Road is going through huge renovation works, with their executive boxes running down one entire touchline now ripped out and replaced with facilities for the media and press, as Premier League rules require.
Their first home game of the season, against Burnley due to be played on August 19, has had to be rescheduled due to the renovation work.
While Gurney's plan for a new stadium never got off the ground, Luton Town are due to move stadiums in the near future, with work expected to begin on the Power Court ground by the end of the year.
Luton hope the new stadium will be complete by 2026, and the club have planning permission to build a 23,000-capacity ground - some 47,000 away from what Gurney wanted, but a whole lot more realistic.
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