LUTON Town star Matty Pearson is delighted that his side have managed to stay in the Championship against all the odds and hopes the Hatters could even make a surprise promotion push next season.

But the Keighley defender will not be resting on his laurels and says he and his teammates cannot get complacent and believe they’ve “arrived” as second-tier players.

Town were bottom of the league with four games to go, but then three wins and a draw saw them stay up by three points.

Pearson missed several post-lockdown games due to an ankle injury, but did play his part in the 3-2 final day win over Blackburn Rovers.

Speaking to the Telegraph & Argus, the 27-year-old said: “We had to play a lot of teams in the middle of the table, or around us, after lockdown, whereas the others had some of the top teams.

“I think definitely the key games were the wins at Huddersfield (2-0 on July 10) and Hull (1-0 on July 18).

“When we played Hull, we had loads of injuries, me included, so we were panicking a bit, but it turned out good in the end.

“I played three or four games when we came back, but then I injured my ankle and was out for a few weeks, before I came back to play 10 minutes against Blackburn on the final day.

“But I’m made up, it’s not about who plays, it’s just about staying up.”

Talking about what we can expect from himself and the team next season, Pearson said: “It comes back to haunt you if you think you’ve arrived as a Championship player, so we’ve just got to keep doing what we have been when playing games.

“But we want to do even better and in football you never know.

“We don’t want to go through what we did this year (in fighting relegation). We’re going to be aiming to finish as high as possible, as it’s not a given where you finish in this league.

“A lower team like ourselves could make that step up and next season is a great opportunity to put a stake in for that.”

Asked what football has been like over the last couple of months and the quick turnaround ahead of next season, Pearson said: “It’s been hard, as it’s not been the atmosphere we’re used to at games (with no fans).

“But we seemed to win away a lot when we came back, so maybe it helped us.

“I’m glad we came back or the season would have been decided on points per game and we’d have gone down, whereas this made us come back into it.

“It has been different, the whole atmosphere, and in training there’s things that were always normal and you can’t do them now.

“But we all adapted and came back fit and hungry to keep ourselves up.

“We’re having two and a half weeks off now, but I head back down there from Keighley this weekend to start training on Monday.

“It’s a quick turnaround, but we had plenty of weeks off before we came back.

“I just hope things go back to normal for everyone soon, as it’s not nice being restricted in the way we have been.”