Luton Town: Returning Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu will be like a ‘new signing’ for the Hatters

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The return of Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu next season will be like a new Luton Town signing, according to midfielder Nathan Doyle.

The injury-stricken former West Ham United youth made just 16 league appearances this term – and five of them came during a perfect winning October run in League Two.

After that Ruddock Mpanzu only made three further fourth tier outings all season and the Hatters were never quite the same force, without his pace and box-to-box style.

Both attributes were things that player of the season Doyle noticed early on after signing for the club in September.

“Pelly Mpanzu has been injured for most of the season but that will be like having a new signing,” said the former Bradford City ace, adding: “He’s been massively missed this year. When I first came I thought, what a player he is. For him to get the injury that he’s had is unfortunate but if we get him right for pre-season we’ll see what will happen.”

Injuries ravaged Town’s squad all season and Doyle too was absent for nine games with a knee problem during February and March where their promotion campaign hit the skids, losing seven times to slip out of the play-off spaces, never to recover.

“It’s not nice to have injuries in the squad. When you look at the teams at the top I bet they rarely had any long term injuries,” the midfielder said.

“We’ve had a lot of injuries and I know it’s not an excuse but it’s one of those things where you do look at the teams [that finished] above you and think, are they really better than us? Not really. Have they ground out results where we haven’t? Probably, but we’ll just have to take it to them next season, whoever is here, and hopefully have a professionalism to go and do it.

“Over the course of the season you do wonder what if and reflect back but, with the rest that we have, I think all the players should reflect on how the season has gone and wonder how they can improve because I’ll certainly be doing it.

“I’m sure everyone at the football club will be doing it, so hopefully we can do that and get better next year.”

He added: “We’ll come back fitter, stronger and better and with a know-how of how to deal with the league.

“It’s a little disappointing that we couldn’t stay in the play-off spots and that automatic promotion position, but it was our first season in the league for a long while.”