Luton Town: Through the Trap Door 2004-2009 - From Championship to Conference

by Rob Hadgraft

To see our huge range of football books, click on "Kindle Store" and search for DESERT ISLAND SPORT.Luton Town may have dropped through the trap door in May 2009, exiting the Football League for the first time in 89 years, but this was no ordinary demotion. Mismanagement and financial distress led to unprecedented points penalties, which saw the club plunge like a broken elevator. Back in 2005-06 they briefly topped the Championship, but just three years later finished 71 places lower in League rankings. No club has ever suffered such a sharp decline, let alone one with recent top-flight experience and five Wembley visits since the late 1980s. This remarkable story is told in words, figures, and photographs. Every Luton first-team match between 2004 and 2009 is recorded in statistical detail, alongside a brief match report of all 265 games played.Luton Town’s drop through the ‘trap door’ in 2009 was extraordinary. In all competitions, the Hatters actually won more games than they lost in 2008-09, and even won a thrilling FL Trophy final at Wembley. The Hatters plunged from 6th in the Championship (football’s second tier) to the bottom of League Two (the fourth tier) in just 22 traumatic months. They became by far the biggest club to be demoted from the Football League.How did it happen? Journalist and life-long fan Rob Hadgraft will tell you. This book provides an ideal companion to Hadgraft’s book Luton Staring into the Abyss, which examined in detail 12 crises that crippled this resilient club in the last 50 years.

167 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 29, 2012

About the author

Born in Luton, England, in 1955, Rob Hadgraft spent 16 years working in regional newspapers as a news and sports reporter and sub-editor, before a spell in public relations in London. He turned freelance in the year 2000, and by 2015 there were 19 sports books published in his name, 14 of them focussing on football club history, plus a series of five acclaimed biographies of famous runners of yesteryear.
His study of Arthur Newton ('Tea With Mr Newton') was long-listed in the William Hill Sports Book of the Year awards in 2010, and his books have twice won the same competition's jacket design prize. Most of his books are also available as e-books for kindle.
Hadgraft, nowadays based in North Essex, is a club runner himself, having completed more than 1,000 road and cross-country races in roughly 30 years (at the last count!). This has inevitably taken a toll on various key joints, leading to the launch of a blog called 'Diary of a Clapped-Out Runner' in 2012 (www.clappedoutrunner.blogspot.com). More info on Rob's books can be found at: www.robhadgraft.com