It is Tuesday afternoon and an hour or so after training Pelly Ruddock Mpanzu, wearing white Crocs studded with Super Mario, Superman and Batman charms, walks into the Eric Morecambe Lounge at Kenilworth Road, Luton Town’s creaking but charismatic ground. The room – home to trophy cabinets, photos of comedy nights here and a panoramic mural with a timeline celebrating the club’s storied past – has an orange glow and Mpanzu a beaming smile as he embraces John Still, the manager who brought him to the club a decade ago, when Luton were toiling in non-league.
A teenage Mpanzu initially joined on loan from West Ham, making his debut at Staines Town in the FA Trophy in front of a crowd of 621, before Luton paid £50,000 to make the move permanent. Those who know Mpanzu talk of a laidback character with a contagious personality and he is calmness personified in the buildup to Saturday’s Championship playoff final, the most lucrative one-off game in the world. The 29-year-old grew up in Hendon, north London, and could spy Wembley from his back garden. He remembers the iconic arch lighting up in the distance. “I’ve been chilled, I’ve been myself,” he says of the buildup this week. “There is no need to be nervous because we know what we can do on the pitch against Coventry. We’ve gone about our days the same as we have the whole season.”
