Despite it being a few weeks from the start of the football season, there has been a lot going on with Huddersfield Town in the past week, so I thought I’d write a bit of a roundup blogpost where I can get down my various thoughts on the last week or so of things that have been happening.
I usually try to keep my articles around one particular theme but this one, I have to confess, is all over the place. Like a supermarket trolley with a mind of its own, I’m going to crash from one thing to the next. I’ll return to a more orderly approach to putting out blogposts shortly. I may even get around to writing the Mick Wadsworth in Africa article I’ve been talking about writing for so long. But for now, here’s my waffle on the latest Town news…
Adios Carlos!
What a shock! After the playoffs I came away feeling relatively happy because at least we had the possibility of putting together another decent attempt at promotion this season with Carlos at the helm. Clearly he didn’t share my optimism! I find his reasons for leaving a little bit baffling. The suggestion that it was all amicable and that Hoyle and Bromby had no idea it was coming was a little surprising; if this is the case then Corberan really must not be great at communicating his feelings.
From skimming the online reaction to the news it seems most fans blame the club for not backing Carlos with the funds to invest in the squad. I’m not really on board with this way of thinking. We brought Carlos on with the clear instruction that he was going to have to work with kids and freebies. He then worked a near miracle with those resources last season but it was never promised that he would be given anything more than that.
While I’m incredibly grateful for everything Carlos did for Town in his time there, I think he acted a little selfishly to leave the club at this stage of the preseason. We’ll see over the next few months what his real intentions were. I suspect he’s realised that his managerial stock is at its highest at this point and if he continues into another season at Town he risks tarnishing his reputation and reducing the possibility of landing a top job. I also think that he’s most likely taken career advice from his mentor, Marcelo Bielsa, who has had more jobs than Miss Rabbit in Peppa Pig (parents of young children will appreciate that one, apologies to everyone else).
Hello Danny Schofield!
I’m pleased that we aren’t going to have the usual unsettling period of rudderless speculation where every manager currently not on the merry-go-round gets linked with the job. Interestingly, even though the club announced Schofield as the new head coach the media still couldn’t help but start linking other club’s coaches with the already-filled role anyway. Journalists will have been seething that the club thoughtlessly denied them all those thousands of column inches of speculation by immediately filling the role.
We’ll not know how smart this decision was until we see how Danny Schofield fares as head coach but the succession planning Town have done and smooth transition that has taken place so far seems sensible. There’s risk involved, obviously but we’ve consistently taken chances on young coaches that want to step up and sometimes it has paid off very nicely (Wagner and Corberán) and other times not so much (Seiwert).
I’m a bit worried for Schofield. He’s a coach with no track record and a lot of doubters, if he has a poor start there will be a lot of people calling for his head before he’s even properly started. While I’ve already heard people calling for patience, I think he really has to hit the ground running and pick up some decent results early on. The good news is that he’s picking up a squad that’s in good condition, we have decent prospects coming through from the youth team and we seem to be on the verge of bringing in a few faces.
O’Brien and Toffolo likely to be on their way
One of the biggest Schofield faces is that we seem likely to be losing two of our best players. O’Brien was always likely to be sold this summer if we didn’t achieve promotion as the contract extension he signed early last season was widely rumoured to have a clause inserted that obligated us to accept bids over a certain figure (I’d guess around the £10m mark). The fact Toffolo is also likely to follow him is a bit of a blow but if the option is to sell now or let him leave for free next summer then it seems like good business to cash in if we can’t tie him down to a new deal.
It will be quite a bitter pill if these two prized assets leave for Nottingham Forest as seems increasingly likely from the media reports. After being beaten by them in the playoff finals it feels galling that they should take our best players from us and pay us with the money we would have received if those penalty decisions had been given (it’s been two months and I’m still not over it – I need to move on!).
Mooy coming back to Town?
While there is a constant stream of transfer waffle involving Town at the moment, one story that made me sit up straight recently was the story that Aaron Mooy has left his Chinese club and is a free agent. Better still, he’s on the lookout for an English club and Town are interested. He is the player I have enjoyed watching most in my time of following Town and it would be an utter joy to see him come back, even if he’s not at quite the same level as his Wagner-era pomp.
Sadly, thinking about it rationally, I can’t make this add up. I did some Googling and Mooy was being paid £50,000 a week at his club in China and I just can’t see Town being able to get anywhere near that. While I’m sure he may be willing to take a pay cut to play in a more competitive league and to be closer to family (I think his wife is Scottish before pedants point out China is closer to Australia) surely we wouldn’t be willing to pay even half that.
I don’t have any insider knowledge but I believe some of our higher earners are earning into the teens of thousands of pounds a week but most are under £10k a week. It could unbalance the dressing room harmony to have someone come in on a huge wage even if they were an obvious star like Mooy.
The last lot of town wages you can find online have Hogg as highest earner on just over £9000 a week. So unless Mooy is willing to accept around that much, it’s unlikely he’ll come back to town. That said, he is older and maybe the familiarity and guarantee of football would be appealing. We can only hope.
I’d love to see him back too but it doesn’t seem like the kind of deal we’re likely to do. Unless the appeal or Marston’s Chicken, Castle Hill and Dixon’s Milk Ices is too much and he’ll play for free.
We need to look forward not back, Mooy should remain an ex Town “legend”, not my point of view really, but other people seem to think so. Give Schofield support, that’s all I say, UTT
Mooy is unquestionably a legend in my eyes. I can’t see any way we could have been promoted in the 16/17 season without him. I’ve never seen a Town midfielder that could control the tempo of the game like he could that season. He was class. Who knows what he’d be like now and I’m not sure we should break the bank to find out just for nostalgia’s sake.
I completely agree with you about Schofield, he’ll get my support. He seems like a nice guy and I hope he does well.
The timing of Carlos’s resignation, the day we signed two players, was strange. Was he not happy with them, although I understand he was to approve signings? He must have already been resigned to losing O’Brien and thought that his possible replacement, David Kasumu, was not good enough to replace him and hoped the fee we receive from the O’Brien would be used for a better replacement.
I think you are correct that Carlos did not want to add a failure to his cv.
I don’t think that was the case, Carlos would have known about town trying to sign Kasumu weeks ago. Plus they would have agreed which players they were targeting weeks in advance. I don’t think we’ll find out any more than we know now, but I’m tempted to agree that he didn’t think he could replicate last season, his stock is the highest it will be and so didn’t want to look like he was going backwards.
It was odd but most probably the calibre of the signings rather than the specific signings that came that day. He most likely wanted us to be competing with the likes of big spenders like West Brom for established performers instead of taking punts on youngsters with potential.
I think if Mooy were coming then Carlos would still be here as he is one player that would give us a chance at automatics in my opinion. Unfortunately it seems that rumour has been squashed by the club this morning.
Yep, when the Examiner say there’s nothing in it then it means the club have told them that it’s not happening.
If CC had walked 12 months ago, a lot of people, including me, would have been deliriously happy. Now I’m fairly ambivalent. I still think he’s like a cat on a hot tin roof who often speaks a lot of incomprehensible nonsense. I doubt there’d have been any tears shed by the players on hearing of his departure.
I was a Danny Schofield supporter when he was a Town player and if he can excite today’s players in the same way, he could do well. Certainly I’ll be behind him…..for a few weeks!
Forget Mooy. Fanciful to think Town could afford him in today’s market. He’s a lovely footballer but he’s gone down a number of notches in my estimation by selling his talent for big bucks. It’s not unlike the Greg Norman rubbish in Saudi Arabia. If you’ve got a God-given talent, to cop out of top competition (where you’re well paid anyway) for the bigger bucks is a poor show in my eyes.
We must find a striker. A potential 20 goals man. Ward did ok last season but has peaked. Rhodes we know is no more than a super-sub. So who is going to knock in those half chances?
I genuinely don’t know as I’ve never seen them in the flesh – are some of these younger players like Camara, like Diarra, like Jackson, etc up to first team football? I saw Diarra very briefly in a pre-season friendly last season and he thought he looked the real deal, stood out amongst his peers, but he never got a kick after that. Does every club have a handful of star youngsters who simply don’t have what it takes to step up to play week in week out with the big boys? Maybe Danny Schofield can bring some of these youngsters through? Please not his namesake in goal – walking disaster!! And please not Scott High; I’ve seen enough of him thanks to know he’s not up to the top half of the Championship.
Anyway, here we are on the brink of another season. This time last season I thought we were in for a disastrous season and somehow, I still don’t know how, my worst fears didn’t materialise. This season I can’t say I’m optimistic but certainly I’m hopeful. That’s a dangerous state to be in.
I suspect the youngsters training with the first team are just making up the numbers for now. Edmonds-Green is ready to step up and there maybe a few others, particularly this lad that has been called up for the Northern Ireland squad (Spencer I think). Most probably need a loan before further down the leagues before the they can play Championship football.
I’m not sure what to expect this season. Its quite nice going into a season with promotion and relegation being more or less equal possibilities. Anything could happen!
Backing Danny for only a few weeks won’t do. He has a hell of a struggle ahead of him and it’s unrealistic to expect early success. The club have chosen him for the long haul. If he fails to maintain our championship status by the end of this season then any blame needs to be directed elsewhere. .
It was slightly tongue in cheek, Gavin. Only slightly as if we haven’t got a point after 4 or 5 matches, I suspect there’ll be some widespread disenchantment.
After Wembley Dean said he would back Carlos with transfer funds…then didnt. Dean will be waiting to see what we get for Toffs & Lewis and then use some of that dosh…so no real investment in reality.
I suspect most of the money will go on paying down debt rather than new signings. We’ll have to wait and see.
But the whole point of being a football club owner is that it is just a hobby like owning a race horse or running a racing car. It’s just a gamble. You don’t expect to “loan” money to your hobby and then consider it a debt to be paid back. Especially when you are just about destroying your football clubs ability to compete for many years as it is hog tied financially. Getting promoted last time was really a fluke. Nobody including Hoyle ever expected us to be promoted. We scraped through with a negative goal difference and had Germans who could take penalties. Hoyles management of our time in the Premier League was abysmal. Buying useless players at exorbitant prices and wages which were carried over to drag us down in the Championship after a terrible last season in the Premier League. His record since then has not improved. It was Hodgkinson who employed Corberan and his staff and gave Town some hope and ambition. It is now back to Hoyle who has again made a mess of it by engineering their departure. The sooner this man goes the better.
I wouldn’t be quite so anti Hoyle as you – be careful what you wish for – but where I totally agree with you is this idea of wealthy chairmen seemingly being benevolent to the club they own. No; this is not how it is. It’s about personal profile and indulging a fantasy that most of would love to have the opportunity to do. If I had personal wealth of, say, £10 million, and the football club I own (and support) needs, say, £2 million to buy a player or two, of course I’d do it. Not only that, this is not a gift; it’s a loan. There is an expectation of being repaid….plus interest! So it’s an investment. True it’s a highly speculative investment where it is possible that you won’t get all your money back. The chairman is a secondary banker; hugely important if a club is to make progress; but he’s not a benevolent money tree.
Your analysis of the last few 5 or 6 seasons I also agree with. Going up to the Premier League was a huge surprise; to this day I don’t understand how we spent so many millions on largely rubbish players; and yes, the second season in the top flight was an embarrassment.
But nonetheless we’re in the Championship, we’re just about solvent and we have a defence that doesn’t concede many goals. So it’s not by any means all doom & gloom.
I’m still not over it. And selling our LOB and Toffs to Forest feels like someone is messing with us and just wants to twist the knife.
Another Forest fun fact is that we had a water cyclinder fitted last week on the day Carlos resigned and… of course the plumber was one of their lot. He was great actually and said VAR got it wrong.
Not sure we’ll ever know the truth about the resignation; I’ve heard so many different theories, but all I know is I loved Schofield as a player and I’ll be there to back him and Chicho and Clem.
Mooy went to China for the money so there would be zero attraction in him coming back to Huddersfield. Any reports to this effect is click bait.
For the second time in succession Town wave goodbye to a managerial team that met all its (very demanding) objectives. It’s almost as if the club makes promises to these managers about the results of success which are not kept when that success is delivered. Only time will tell. I’m wishing Danny all the success in the world. To do as well as Carlos with what looks like a weaker squad he will certainly need his share of luck.
Like you I can’t get over play-off penalties and I’ve spent as much if not more time on recent events. Mooy – no chance, although a legend – my chief memory of him is our throw-ins, if they went to him we kept possession, if not we didn’t.
I penned all of the rest of this days ago.
That Thursday was not a good day for the club. Perhaps the most relevant comments so far: from CC “my approach to my work is based exclusively on the strongest commitment to and utmost alignment with the policy of the club I’m serving because that is the only way to ensure the dedication required to manage a football team” and Bromby stating; “Carlos Corberan resigned as Huddersfield Town head coach because he didn’t believe he could replicate the success of last season”. What specifically is this alignment discrepancy? The fans should be told.
CC has made Town a lot of money principally by increasing the value of many players, leading the club to a play-off final and significantly increasing the number of Season Card holders. Subsequently having earned the right to have the quality of the squad improved he has been denied this, as have the fans who bought season cards on the basis of continuity.
After the astonishing overachievement during the previous nine months or so it appears CC is returning to Spain to be with his immediate family maybe the reason is personal and private. Maybe it’s a coincidence that it coincides within a day of two recent signings and/or a conversation with Bromby. Maybe it’s the transfer of Pipa and the imminent departure of two of his most important players, O’Brien and Toffolo? Maybe it’s the fact that he wasn’t being backed by the club with suitable acquisitions? Maybe he doesn’t like the way the saviour Hoyle runs the club? Indeed Hodgkinson appointed him.
The club did well for him with the defensive signings in the previous close season, but maybe he’s tired of playing the wrong type of football? After all the style of football last season was nothing like the sort we were being offered/promised at his appointment and we witnessed first-hand pre-Christmas in his first season. Two completely different styles the former developed through pragmatism rather than idealism.
For Hoyle to apparently say that this decision was a “real shock” then it’s a reasonable assumption to make that his finger is not on the pulse of HTFC.
The most impressive trait of CC was not his success but the considered way in which he conducted himself before and after the match itself. This alone will be almost impossible to replicate.
What have Town done to prolong the stay of a rookie manager, who had the gumption to rescue the club from the near disaster, under him, of the season before last and then with a fair wind could have promoted the side to the Premiership. Where is the sense in this mindlessness?
CC has had the common sense to leave while his stock is still high, before the club in its wisdom chooses to tarnish it. I have heard no mention of the club tempting or persuading him to stay.
I believe Danny Schofield doesn’t have the necessary coaching qualifications to manage in the Premiership; how does that fit in with the clubs self-lauded forward planning? Not that I wish him ill, I hope he makes a tremendous success of his new role.
TS: Re your remark that CC likely took career advice from Bielsa, I suspect you’re right, but not for the reason you offer! Please have a closer look at Bielsa’s resume: El Loco has had rather few jobs, in fact! Fwiw, I would say that where CC may have been influenced is this: throughout his career El Loco has always walked away– e.g. from the Chilean national team or more spectacularly from Lazio–when he felt he wasn’t getting what he was promised by the club. CC’s remarks seem to go in this direction, it seems to me, though he didn’t spell things out the way Bielsa typically did. In any case, it seems like a big loss at this point– wish it were Hoyle going instead.