It’s not been dull for Huddersfield Town since their relegation from the Premier League in 2019… but usually not for the right reasons.
Huddersfield are just one of those sides that don’t ever do comfortable, straightforward mid-table seasons. The last time they had anything like that was back in 2008/09; since then, whatever division they have been in, they spent every single campaign either pushing for promotion (sometimes successfully, more often not) or battling relegation (often successfully, sometimes not).
The Terriers stayed true to that after their two-year stint in the Premier League, just about escaping the dreaded double-drop that had just befallen Sunderland and which has since been replicated by Luton.
You may like
After another Championship relegation battle the following season, Huddersfield finished a surprise third place only to lose a controversial play-off final to Nottingham Forest. Steve Cooper’s side duly poached two of their best players, Harry Toffolo and Lewis O’Brien.
Even worse, inspirational head coach Carlos Corberan left too, suddenly announcing his resignation on the first day of pre-season. And while that timing was far from ideal, it’s hard to blame him in hindsight.
At the time, Huddersfield’s future was a complete mystery. In 2019, local businessman Phil Hodgkinson had bought a 75 per cent stake in the club from long-standing owner Dean Hoyle, who retained the rest of the club but took a hands-off role.
But when Hodgkinson’s other businesses went into administration midway through that play-off season, that dynamic was reversed: Hoyle had to step back in to fund and run the club, while Hodgkinson resigned as chairman.
This was, however, only to be a temporary arrangement: Hoyle made clear his intention to find a new 100 per cent owner for the club, only to have to step back from the club himself for medical reasons before a buyer had been found.
With the end of the 2022/23 season drawing near, Huddersfield were on the brink of going into administration, while on the pitch they were in dreadful form and on course to be relegated to League One.
Two saviours appeared to rescue them from the brink. In the dugout Neil Warnock made a sensational return to the club he had managed in the mid-1990s and led the side on a miraculous run of 21 points from their final ten games, lifting them clear of the bottom three.
In the boardroom, meanwhile, American businessman Kevin Nagle emerged out of left field to buy the club, with promises of renewed investment and aspirations of a Premier League return.
That investment has indeed been made: the club has departed from its over-16s-only academy model to re-expanded its academy to encompass all ages, while millions have been spent on giving the John Smith’s Stadium (now re-named the Accu Stadium) a fresh lick of paint and improved matchday facilities. But on the pitch, things have only gone backwards.
After a faltering start to the season, differences of opinion led the Huddersfield board to sack Warnock just a few months after confirming he would stay on as manager into the new season. Successor Darren Moore never got the side going, and the bold appointment of German gaffer Andre Breitenreiter as their third manager of the 2023/24 season did nothing to improve their fortunes either.
Having just about survived the drop to League One in three of the previous four seasons, Huddersfield were finally relegated to the third tier. Breitenreiter was offered the chance to stay on, but declined – but not before making clear where he thought their problems were.
The German did not mince words as he declared that the Huddersfield dressing room was extremely fractious, with too many players who were only too willing to point the finger of blame at others.
The man they appointed to replace him, Michael Duff, would go on to speak of the damaging effect of the mental turmoil the players had gone through over the past few years.
After all, last season’s squad still contained plenty of first-team regulars who had gone so close to the Premier League – the likes of Lee Nicholls, Matty Pearson, Tom Lees, Danny Ward, and the long-serving Jonathan Hogg, the only holdover from their 2017 play-off success – only to find themselves playing third tier football.
Duff wanted to restore a winning mentality, and was backed in the transfer market – but even as they publicly declared themselves happy with their summer business and talked up their hopes of automatic promotion at the first time of asking, Huddersfield privately felt that their squad revamp should ideally have been more sweeping.
Huddersfield had expected offers for some of their better players to enable that, but departures ended up being minimal. Even two-time player of the year Michal Helik, a proven and dependable Championship centre-back who had scored nine goals the previous season, remained at the club until he eventually departed for Oxford United in the January transfer window… to much consternation from Huddersfield fans.
The first half of the season had been streaky, to say the least. An excellent start gradually gave way to a run of seven defeats in eight, which in turn was followed by a 16-game undefeated league streak. Even that run was punctuated by a profoundly embarrassing FA Cup first round defeat to non-league Tamworth, broadcast live for the nation to see on BBC One.
Still, despite an obvious lack of firepower up front, Huddersfield entered the new year in the top six and hopeful they could push on into the automatic promotion places. They bolstered their ranks in January by spending significant transfer fees on centre-forwards Joe Taylor, from Luton, and Dion Charles, from Bolton.
The duo had scored 24 goals in 52 games in League One the previous season, with Taylor particularly impressive in his half-season on loan at Lincoln City. What could go wrong?
Everything, as it turned out. Huddersfield had struggled with a ridiculous number of injuries in the first half of the season, and things only got worse after the new year. After scoring on his debut, Taylor had to be removed from action for several weeks with a hamstring issue, and didn’t look fit after his return.
Charles would meanwhile end the season without scoring a single goal, and angered fans yet further by going to watch his former club from the away end at Blackpool – not the best-advised move, given that at the time, Bolton looked like being fierce rivals for a play-off spot.
Huddersfield had meanwhile sanctioned Helik’s departure in part because they had a bevy of other centre-backs to choose from and it would take a ridiculous crisis to make that into an issue. Sure enough, that nightmare scenario came to pass; on one occasion, they finished a game with a back three made up of two full-backs and a central midfielder.
Duff was dismissed in March with Huddersfield in dismal form, but surprisingly, they opted against appointing a permanent successor. Instead, popular academy boss Jon Worthington was announced as interim head coach until the end of the season, having impressed in a previous caretaker spell just before Warnock’s return.
Not so much this time; Huddersfield picked up just six points from Worthington’s ten games in charge, conceding 22 goals and scoring just 11… five of which were against relegated Crawley. Huddersfield finished a miserable 10th, 14 points short of the top six.
Huddersfield’s response this summer has been to rip things up as much as they can and start again. Perhaps most significantly, Huddersfield have been bold with their managerial appointment, turning to former goalkeeper Lee Grant to lead them into the new season.
This is Grant’s first managerial role, but he has been preparing for this ever since his surprise move to Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United in 2018. Grant played just two competitive games for United, but already had a coaching career in mind, and spent his four years at Old Trafford asking questions of his teammates, trying to figure out what made elite players tick and how dressing room dynamics worked.
When United coach Kieran McKenna left for Ipswich in 2022, Grant followed him and joined his coaching team; perhaps surprisingly, Grant actually coached Ipswich’s forwards. 101 League One goals and 92 Championship goals later, Ipswich had successfully pulled off back-to-back promotions into the Premier League.
Chairman Nagle admits he was not inclined to appoint a first-time manager as Duff’s successor, but Grant was so impressive at interview that he completely changed his mind.
Yes, going for a rookie manager is a gamble – but Huddersfield came to the conclusion that they had tried playing it safe with the more-established Moore and Duff, and that it hadn’t worked. McKenna was a first-time manager when he went to Ipswich, as was Chris Davies as he went to table-topping Birmingham last summer. League One, they feel, is an appropriate division for a new manager can cut his teeth without compromising performance.
Huddersfield have also shown their faith in Grant by giving him the ‘manager’ title, rather than head coach. They are holding off on appointing a new sporting director above him at least until the new season begins – former Stoke City man Mark Cartwright having been axed from the role not long after Duff. For now, Grant is working with the club’s scouts and chief executive Jake Edwards on bringing in the new players.
With free-spending Birmingham City and a newly-global Wrexham now up in the Championship, Huddersfield are right up there as perhaps the biggest financial powerhouse in League One: their £3m acquisition of Taylor in January is the second-biggest transfer fee ever spent by an English third-tier side, behind the eye-watering amount Birmingham spent on Jay Stansfield last summer.
That, again, was a factor in turning to Grant – a coach’s coach with a reputed flair for tactical detail. If Huddersfield felt they needed someone to work with what they had, they may well have gone a different direction.
But as it is, Huddersfield have as close to a blank slate as they are likely to get… and that means they believe they are in a position to build a new-look side in the image of a tactically-minded manager like Grant.
Most of their longest-serving players were out of contract at the end of the season, and none have been retained. Six new signings have already been confirmed, including two Premier League loanees, and more are expected to be on their way.
Goalkeeper Nicholls is now the only first-team player left standing from the Corberan era, and even his position is now in serious doubt after the loan signing of highly-rated young Crystal Palace stopper Owen Goodman – League Two’s keeper of the year last season after helping play-off winners AFC Wimbledon to the best defensive record in the division.
Alongside footballing ability Huddersfield’s signings so far have had two big boxes to tick. First, they wanted to bring a bit more youth to the squad. Alongside 21-year-old Goodman, they have got it in 20-year-old Aston Villa loanee Josh Feeney, 21-year-old Lincoln defender Sean Roughan, and 23-year-old Wycombe centre-back Joe Low.
Second, in a bid to address last season’s constant injury problems, they have focused on players with a track record for physical robustness and minimal time on the sidelines; Roughan, for instance, played every single minute in League One last season. Millwall’s 32-year-old Murray Wallace and Ipswich’s 29-year-old Marcus Harness may not tick the youth box, but both have been dependable when it comes to their fitness record.
Now entering the third year of the Nagle regime, Huddersfield fans expect nothing less than a more convincing and sustained promotion push this season – and are right to do so.
In spite of finishing last campaign in relegation form, the bookies currently have Huddersfield as fourth-favourites to win League One next season, with only the three newly-relegated sides – Luton, Cardiff and Plymouth – rated higher… and only narrowly so, in Cardiff and Plymouth’s case.
After the six years Huddersfield have just had, the mood has understandably shifted away from the bullishness they and their fans had last summer, and instead settled into very cautious optimism. ‘Cautious’ in important: everyone has something big to prove, from the board to Grant to the new signings to those who are left over from last season.
But it says something that even after the six years Huddersfield have just had, the word ‘optimism’ remains at least some part of their outlook. The Grant gamble might just pay off after all…or so they hope.
