A premier league love story has heartbreak ahead

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

Luton Town's promotion to the Premier League in May, the construction crews were moving in and the scaffolding was going up at its stadium, Kenilworth Road. The club's first home game in English soccer's top flight since its money-spinning, supercharged rebrand into the richest, most popular league in the world was not quite three months away. There was an alarming amount of work to do, and not nearly enough time to do it.

Luton's stadium has for some time been something of a throwback in English soccer: defiantly cramped, unapologetically tumbledown, the kind of careworn, hostile, raw sort of place most teams have long since left behind in favor of something more modern, more comfortable, possibly just a little bland. Kenilworth Road, though, was both a point of difference and a point of pride, a feature the club had come to regard as a source of strength, rather than weakness. «I don't think anyone likes coming to the Kenny,» defender Amari'i Bell said last season, using the ground's affectionate nickname.

«When we played Chelsea, I don't think they enjoyed it. If you come here and you're not in the right frame of mind, you can't wait to leave.» (BEGIN OPTIONAL TRIM.) The Premier League, though, has commanded that the club dull the edge of that secret weapon, just a little. It has an image to maintain, after all, and that means ensuring all of its stadiums meet certain criteria.