Nakamba facing hurdles to regain his first XI berth

Fungai Muderere, Senior Sports Reporter

LUTON Town coach, Rob Edwards admits Warriors captain Marvelous Nakamba is facing hurdles to regain his place in their starting 11.

Nakamba returned to action this month after spending eight months on the sidelines due to a nagging knee injury.

The knock required surgery and this ended the midfielder’s campaign when the team was fighting to survive relegation in the English Premier League (EPL) last season.

His return was marked with a starting appearance in the Carabao Cup defeat to Queens Park Rangers but was dropped to the bench in the following game against the same side in the English Championship.

Edwards said, as quoted by Luton Today: “He’s progressing well, it’s a real challenge and we had a good chat with him and some of the staff the other day as we have to manage his body.

“He won’t be able to train necessarily as much as he or us would want him to all the time at the moment, but that’s because there’s a real good plan in place to make sure he’s fit for selection. We’ve got to try and get that balance right, of getting him fit when he can’t always train every single day and he’s trying to find that. It’s almost a little bit of a new normal for him, so we’ve got to make sure we find that for the foreseeable until we’re confident then that he’s fully there.

“We’ll see how that progresses over the next few weeks and months, but I think Marvelous is someone who gets better with game time and playing. He’s proved that to us in the past when he first joined here. All right he didn’t have the injury then, but he probably wasn’t fully fit when he came in, but just played, played, played, played and got up to speed fairly quickly. So, I’m bearing that in mind as well.”—@FungaiMuderere