Mark Fotheringham takes charge of his first game as Huddersfield Town head coach tomorrow afternoon and I suspect many Reading fans will fear that we will be beneficiaries of the famous new manager bounce. However, my instinct was that Huddersfield Town never seem to get good results straight away under new managers and we usually have to wait at least a little while before getting their first win. To see if I was right I waded through the record books (not really, I just looked it up online) and found I was right – new managers, or head coaches, have lost their first game in charge going back for a very long time.
Here’s a quick rundown of just how far back you have to go in Huddersfield Town history before you’ll find a Huddersfield Town boss who actually won their first game in charge.
Danny Schofield – Lost 1-0 to Burnley on the opening day of the season
You really don’t need the memory of an elephant to remember the last new Huddersfield Town head coach’s first game in charge as it was only around a couple of months ago. Burnley were also playing under a new coach and Vincent Kompany showed that he had used his summer much more effectively than Danny Schofield as his Burnley side showed an ambition to play beautiful flowing football, rather than the dour, turgid stuff that Sean Dyche had, sometimes unfairly, become famous for during his time at the club.
Carlos Corberan – Lost 1-0 to Rochdale in the league cup then 1-0 to Norwich in the Championship
I didn’t know whether to include cup games or league games but it didn’t matter for Carlos as he lost both his first competitive game in the league cup and then followed that up with another defeat in the league anyway. Those games showed glimmers of the Bielsaball style of football he had been tasked with implementing when we brought him in (though he achieved most success at Town when he ditched this style for a more pragmatic approach).
The problem we had in the early days was that the players were nowhere near fit enough to press for 90 minutes and the players visibly wilted in the late stages of games and the tired legs of our players became easy pickings for the opposition. Although the opening league defeat was a tightly contested encounter with a highly fancied Norwich team which was ultimately decided by an ill-judged Richard Stearman backpass.
Danny Cowley – Lost 2-0 to Sheffield Wednesday
Town were in a dire position when the Cowleys took over after Jan Siewert’s mismanagement had left the club in a bit of a state. Not to mention the dross we couldn’t offload from the Premier League days that were still picking up big wages and stinking up the place too. So it wasn’t a huge surprise that there wasn’t an immediate result for Danny Cowley when he took over despite him having a fairly decent side on paper. The likes of Schindler, Hogg, Chalobah, O’Brien and Karlan Grant were all in the team that day but they would have found their work made harder by having to play alongside the likes of Diakhaby, Hadergjonaj and Kongolo (who seemed to have a disgusting attitude after Town dropped down to the Championship).
Jan Siewert – Lost 1-0 to Everton
It’s no surprise that Siewert lost his opening game as he lost almost every other Town game he managed too. In fact, I think he did relatively well to keep the score down to just 1-0 at the time given how terrible Town’s form and morale was at the time.
I’d almost forgotten that Town signed Jason Puncheon on loan in the January of our relegation season but this is one of the rare games he started. I dread to think how much money we wasted on wages for him but he made almost no impact and spent most of his time injured. Though, in fairness, we were a lost cause by the point he arrived anyway.
David Wagner – Lost 3-1 to Sheffield Wednesday
This defeat felt a bit different to most games where Town lose. Despite the scoreline looking like a fairly convincing loss, anyone that saw the game or listened along on the radio was able to get a sense that this weird-sounding and previously unheard-of coach from Germany has some interesting ideas. He was getting the players to do things a bit differently and it was interesting to watch even if it didn’t always work.
That first season under Wagner was one of transition and it didn’t all fall into place until he was able to bring in the players he wanted the following summer but there were still signs that he had the right plan and knew how to execute it. It might not have been obvious from the very first game of his tenure but there were a few little signs that David Wagner had the potential to do something special.
Chris Powell – Lost 2-1 to Middlesbrough
Urgh, it feels wrong to go from talking about how special David Wagner was to trying to muster the enthusiasm to discuss Chris Powell’s time at Huddersfield Town. In fact. Google it if you like, I can’t be bothered to write any more about him he was so unimpressive. Nice bloke but so dull as a manager.
Mark Robins – Lost 4-1 to Wigan in the FA Cup then 6-1 in the Championship to Nottingham Forest
I sometimes wonder if we didn’t give Mark Robins enough credit or time to implement his ideas while he was at Huddersfield Town. I remember him talking about wanting to play out from the back and build up possession slowly and thinking it was the most dreary way to play football. Then everyone started doing it after that. He’s still doing it at Coventry and he’s getting pretty decent results. At Town, he was always quite unimpressive though, so dour and understated like he couldn’t really be bothered with it all.
Like Carlos Corberan, Robins started his tenure with a defeat in the cup, 4-1 to Wigan, then followed it up by falling to a 6-1 defeat to Nottingham Forest. It’s a surprise he made it past these opening two games after letting in ten goals in 180 minutes. I do remember there being a lot of talk back then about wanting to change the style of play and become more of a footballing club after the more direct approach of Simon Grayson but when you’ve got players like Alan Lee and Anthony Gerrard on your books it’s not easy to suddenly transition into playing the beautiful game – as Robins clearly found out in his early days.
Simon Grayson – WON (!!!!) 2-0 against Exeter City in League One
So I finally found the last Huddersfield Town manager to win their first game in charge, I had to go back eight managers and ten years to find them, it’s Simon Grayson. He beat Exeter City 2-0 in February 2012 thanks to Jamie McCombe and a young striker called Jordan Rhodes. McCombe’s goal was assisted by another promising youngster called Danny Ward. Maybe those two might be able to contribute towards helping the latest Town boss get an opening game win tomorrow.
Simon Grayson will always be remembered as the manager that helped Town get out of League One after we had been stuck at that level for so many years. Was it a bit harsh to get rid of him once we made it up to the Championship? It’s so long ago now I can’t say I can clearly remember, I do recall that he was a pragmatist when it came to how he set his teams up and we most likely fancied ourselves as being better than that after achieving promotion. In reality, we might have been better sticking with a less fancy approach.
Unlike many of Town’s previous managers and head coaches, Simon Grayson is still working as a football manager. He’s currently managing in the Indian Super League at Bengaluru FC. It’s easy to be dismissive of foreign football leagues but I think it’s admirable that he’s been willing to go abroad and ply his trade in a different country and try something a bit different.
Interesting research, TS.
Could I add arguably Town’s best manager in the last half century, the late Ian Greaves? He’d taken over in the summer of 1968, he’d had time to prepare pre-season. First match? An anticlimax. Home match v Portsmouth, 0-0. I was almost certainly there but have no memory of it etched in my memory. It took to Match 5 for the first win, a 2-0 win against Derby County, both goals from Paul Aimson (a strangely effective striker). It was Match 9 before Town won their second match – 3-0 against Cardiff, 2 goals from Frank Worthington.
Bounce? What bounce?
Town finished 6th that season and the following season Town won Division 2 (the old-fashioned Championship) at a stroll.
I think most of us would be happy if Mark Fotheringham emulated that record.
Aren’t you forgetting Narcis Pelach who also had a magnificent 100% record during his Huddersfield managerial career!
Great point by Another Simon.
Fascintating article.
In answer to your Grayson question: no. I remember driving north to a couple of his final home games at the helm and seeing some of the most boring football ever. He did a great job in getting us over the line, but Dean was right (again) to show him the door.
Wishing Fotheringham a Cooper-esque season.
With the new managerial era I thought I would look at this seasons target(s). There are just 2. Playoffs or avoid relegation. There are 38 matches left but if we just consider 36, the arithmetic’s easier. To achieve what should be a playoff position, about 79 points are needed. We have 7 so that’s 72 points to win. Divide 72 by 36 games that’s 2 points average per game or win 6 points in every 9. Avoiding relegation with say 55 points leaves us with 48 points to win. That means we have to win 4 points in every 9. To sum up, the playoff figures are win 2 out of every 3 games. The avoid relegation figures are win 1, draw 1 out of every 3 games. There are also the couple of games in the 38 which could make the points totals even better. Which (if either!) is doable?