Luton

Luton Town open this season in League One, back in the third tier after a rapid fall from the Premier League they reached for the first time only in 2023, via the play-offs, and left again within two years. Relegation from the Championship followed in 2025, though the campaign there had already closed with the EFL Trophy, a second lift of that cup to go with the one won in 2008/09.

The play-off run of 2023 mattered because of where Luton had been. Administration in 2007-08 brought a 30-point deduction before the 2008/09 season even started, still the heaviest such penalty handed out in English football, and relegation out of the Football League to the National League followed in 2009. The National League title in 2014 began the climb back, through the Football League and into the Championship by 2019, then further still.

The club's own peak before that had come in 1988, when a Luton side built around Ricky Hill and Steve Foster beat Arsenal 3-2 to win the League Cup. A finalist in the FA Cup in 1959, losing to Nottingham Forest, Luton had by then already carried the nickname the Hatters through decades of the town's straw hat trade, back to a founding in 1885.

Gordon Turner remains the club's record scorer, with 276 goals, and Mick Harford played up front before later managing the side. More recently, James Justin came through the academy and moved on to Leicester and the England squad. Watford supply the closest rivalry, contested as the Beds-Herts derby.

Kenilworth Road has been home since 1905 and holds around 12,000, one of the smaller grounds left in English league football.