Luton 1 -2 Fulham

On a hot and sticky evening, Luton fans were pleased to see Sol Davis and Chris Coyne in Town shirts after injury, but saw Howard and Heiikkinen out with training ground injuries.

Leon Barnett, reportedly the subject of interest by Pompey's Harry Redknapp, also returned taking over from Coyne on the hour.

Warren Feeney started and the Irishman continued his goal-scoring form with fourth goal in as many games, and both new signings impressed.

Mike Newell gave all the fit players a run at some point, in fact the grandad of them all, Russ Perrett was the only player who completed the entire match, probably because there was no further central defender available to replace him.

Marlon Beresford also looked back to full fitness, or as full of fitness as you can be at his age(!) (just kidding Marlon!) and he made a number of quality saves to keep Luton interested.

Fulham brought a strong squad and began to stroke the ball around immediately, with Collins John going close early on. Brko looked aggrieved when the referee didn't entertain his penalty appeal when he went down under a challenge by Rosenior, but there seemed little contact.

John did find the net after 14 minutes, which looked as though it could signal an onslaught, but as with Liverpool in the cup last season, the Town showed that they can step up when they are required to and Langley almost repeated his free kick goal of last week, but fired just over on this occasion.

Luton almost made an immediate response, when Langley fired a free-kick narrowly over the crossbar, and a Brkovic special, superbly executed by the Croatian sensation, beat keeper Niemmi but hit the bar before Warren Feeney was fortunate to find the ball arriving unexpectedly at his feet, and drove it home without any of the hesitstion he was showing last season.

Beresford continued to deny a lively Fulham front line, before Dean Brill replaced him for the last 15 minutes or so, and I felt that, had this been a league game, Luton would have got something from it, however, as usual, the number of substitutions destroyed the flow of the game.

Fulham took the lead just after the break when Helguson pounced after a great save from Beresford to clip in the rebound.

Luton showed enough to suggest that they are still good enough to cause some damage in the Championship!

Luton now travel to Sweden on their mini-tour and play their first match on Monday.

Luton Town: Beresford (Brill 76), Foley (Keane 70), Davis (Emanuel 49), Coyne (Barnett 62), Perrett, Brkovic (Morgan 62), Edwards (Bell 62), Langley (Holmes 62), Robinson (Nicholls 62), Vine (O'Leary 76), Feeney (Andrew 70).

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