Lucky losers Luton target ‘greatest season ever’, starting with Hatters derby at Wembley

Jack Wilshere’s promotion chasers take on Stockport in Sunday’s Vertu Trophy final with renewed momentum

Spring has arrived, and along with sunshine, budburst, bluebells and nesting birds something else is stirring in a previously gloomy corner of Bedfordshire, something nourishing and warming, novel but also faintly familiar: hope.

“The last couple of years it’s been a really tough place to be,” says James Shea, Luton’s longest-serving player. “We’ve lost a lot of games and once you get used to losing it’s hard to turn it around. And you can see we’re starting to turn it around. If you’d said when we were in the Premier League that we’d be in League One in 18 months’ time, people probably would have laughed at you. It’s been a combination of everything – things have gone against us, and we’ve been everyone’s biggest game … Momentum can work both ways, and we had momentum in going down. Hopefully we’ve turned that around and hopefully we’re on the way back up.”