Zimbabwe captain Marvelous Nakamba made a winning return in his first league start for Luton Town since last December as they secured their first win of the season with a 1-0 victory against Millwall away at the Den on Saturday.
The 30-year-old midfielder played 45 minutes in the league cup tie at Queens Park Rangers but last started for the Hatters in a league fixture against Manchester City at Kenilworth Road 10 months ago.
Nakamba, who has been eased back into the Luton Town side after missing the start of the new Championship season due to a long term injury looked solid during his 68 minutes shift on the field of play.
He was replaced by DR Congo international Pelly-Ruddock Mpanzu as the Hatters held on for a crucial win.
Luton Town took the lead early on when centre half Teden Mengi dispatched a sweetly struck effort from outside the box into the corner of the net right in front of the near 2,000 travelling fans.
The result saw Town climb out of the relegation zone and end a run of 11 games without a win since beating AFC Bournemouth 2-1 in the Premier League on April 4.
Nakamba’s first appearance of the season came after the Luton Town manager Rob Edwards has suggested that the Zimbabwe international would take some time before returning to his best after spending eight months on the sidelines due to a knee injury.
His return was marked with a starting appearance in the Carabao Cup defeat to QPR but was dropped to the bench in the following game against the same side in the English Championship.
Edwards said, as cited 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 do 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 it’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 Marv 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.”