Ethan Horvath played a key role in Luton Town earning its first return to the English Premier League since 1996, but the Hatters will reportedly not be making the move to acquire the American goalkeeper permanently.
Luton Town has declined its purchase option to acquire Horvath from Nottingham Forest this summer, The Athletic reported. The 28-year-old was one of the top goalkeepers in the English Football League Championship last season, registering 20 clean sheets (second-most).
Horvath arrived at Kenilworth Road last summer after serving in a back-up role at Nottingham Forest. The former Club Brugge and Molde shot-stopper earned promotion with Nottingham Forest, but was loaned out after several goalkeeping additions at the City Ground.
Horvath and Luton Town edged Coventry City 6-5 in a penalty shootout at Wembley Stadium last May with the Hatters earning the final promotion spot back to the EPL. In total, he made 44 league appearances for Luton Town last season, grabbing hold of the No. 1 job and not relinquishing it.
Horvath’s Nottingham Forest future remains undetermined with Dean Henderson linked to a permanent move to the City Ground from Manchester United. Keylor Navas’ loan from Paris Saint-Germain ended in June while Wayne Hennessey is also under contract.
His contract with Nottingham Forest is set to expire in June 2024 with the new Premier League season set to begin on August 4.
American Attacking midfielder Agustin Anello signed for Sparta Rotterdam in the Eredivisie. Can play multiple attacking positions. Will be watching to see how he does.
That’s a complete slap in the face to Horvath! 😡 Shame on Luton Town using him for promotion, than dumping him. It’s so hard to find genuine people now in days, because everyone is a two faced user now in days with alternative motives. Smh
*Ulterior motives
Totally agree with you Striker91! That’s ridiculous. A total cost-saving but classless move on their part to cut costs. No loyalty!!
Dainja, we’ll see but I’m guessing they end up spending more on a better player.
Striker, you are spot on…classless on the part of Luton Town!
Dainja, is also right. Luton Town’s owner is “cashing in” on the team’s promotion, lowering the wage bill, and hoping they stay up.
Johnny, NO WAY they spend more for a keeper.
All that said, professional soccer is a BUSINESS, and like all other businesses, the owner gets to decide how they want to run their business.
Conducting business in this fashion, I am confident they will run their business right back to the English Championship for the 2024-2025 season.
Papi: The difference in what they stand to make by staying in the EPL to going down is too significant to not try to stay up. (One estimate I saw is around 225 million more dollars with tv, prize money, and additional advertising) They’ll likely get someone on loan, who will make more in salary than Horvath. Might they end up slightly ahead because there won’t be a transfer fee I guess but I don’t know what the buy fee was for Horvath. Forest got him on a free and his Transfermkt value is under 2 million. It stinks for Ethan but it’s not about saving money it’s about trying to get better at a position of value.
It didn’t really surprise me. Fulham twice bought guys to replace Ream after being instrumental in promotion. I was looking at the metrics on Callendar last week and noticed Horvath’s analytics didn’t bode well for him. Basically what they indicated was that Luton’s defense were really good at limiting quality shots but Ethan actually under performed slightly allowing more goals than were indicated he should have based on the type of shot and where they were taken from. PSxG-GA: -0.03. For reference Steffen is -0.07, Turner is +0.36 (99 percentile as in he’s an elite shot stopper). That being said guys like Meslier at Leeds and both Henderson and Navas at Forest had worse numbers. I feel like they’ll go for a backup from a bigger club on loan. Who knows maybe Turner. As for Horvath NF is low on keepers Henderson’s transfer is slowed and Navas’s loan ended so it’s basically Ethan and Hennessy (the Wales keeper) but he’s 36. Ethan should have some preseason minutes to showcase himself.
If Luton Town ownership will not properly invest in the team, they’ll end up right back in Championship next season. This move will just get them a bad reputation, and players will avoid a loan or transfer. Horvath is a proven quality and will land somewhere in this transfer window.
It’s interesting.
The same thing happened to Huddersfield a few years ago.
They miraculously wound up in the Premier league. If I remember correctly they lasted one season and then went back down.
I’m sure Luton’s owners remember Huddersfield better than I do because it looks like they are making the same choice.
Make what improvements you can based on your budget and do your best to stay as long as you can.
They need to make sure that they use the money they will make to strengthen the club for the long term.
And that probably means they won’t go crazy into debt, hire Jesse Marsch or whatever strategy teams use, to stay up.
The truth is like Huddersfield, they probably don’t have the financial wherewithal to stay long term.
They are not RR McReynolds Company LLC, (Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney) and they don’t have the resources to promote that lifestyle.
Unless some big deal investor buys in.