Our second signing of the summer arrives from Luton Town - prompting the question who was the last player Charlton signed on a permanent deal straight from playing regularly in The Premier League?
Luke Berry is a 31 year old goal scoring midfielder who played under Nathan Jones at Luton in 2018-19. It seems that his admiration for Jones is the reason for him being prepared to drop down to play in League One next season:
“He’s got an intensity about him that gets the best out of me,” said Berry. “And I feel like he gets the best out of players and teams. He’s just a great person as well as a great Manager. I signed for him in League Two and he was saying things [about getting to the Premier League]. You’re thinking, ‘this guy, he’s crazy’. But eventually he was right. You’ve just got to believe in yourself - this Charlton team is a really good team, we just need to believe in ourselves and put in the hard work, and I can see us doing something special. He’s been trying to get hold of me for a while, just saying how great the club is. When I finished up at Luton, I rang him straight away and wanted to get it going.”
Berry began his career at Cambridge United - playing 128 games in The National League (then The Conference Premier) and helping them gain promotion back to the EFL in 2014. Having achieved that he joined Barnsley in League One but, despite making 31 appearances for them, he was back at Cambridge in League Two the following year. He was virtually ever present for two seasons (91 games, 29 goals) before Jones persuaded him that Luton had better prospects for promotion.
How right he was. Berry was part of the team that won back to back promotions and by 2019 he was playing Championship football. He made a total of 86 Championship appearances over the next four seasons before being a member of the squad that gained promotion to The Premier League. He made 17 Premier league appearances and, when he scored against Nottingham Forest in March of this year, he became the first Luton player to score in all four top divisions of English football.
Nathan Jones enthuses:
“He’s a player I know very well as a character, athlete and footballer. It’s a significant signing for us with the track record that he’s got of promotions. He’s obviously had three promotions with Luton and that’s exactly what we’ve brought him in for. We’ve fought off a lot of competition to get him and I’m just pleased that our club and my relationship with him has enabled us to get the signing over the line. I’m sure he’s going to be a significant signing for the club.
His last appearance was in the Premier League and his next appearance is going to be for Charlton Athletic, so that’s the type of calibre that we want to attract. We’ve fought off a lot of Championship interest for Luke.
He’s similar to me in terms of wanting to be part of another project and wanting somewhere where he can be for a while and get his teeth stuck into. He’s someone that I absolutely love working with on a day-to-day basis and that’s going to continue.”
When Luke scores his first goal for Charlton it will no doubt bring back memories of a great night at The Valley forty two years ago. That was the occasion of the last goal scored for us by someone called Berry. It was of course Les Berry and it proved to be the winner against Burnley a few weeks before the arrival of Allan Simonsen. If Luke can have as impressive a Charlton career as Les then we might just have something to look forward to.