Huddersfield Town finished third in the Championship this season and have made it to the playoff final a week on Sunday with a squad that cost buttons. Despite the Championship being littered with clubs that have spent large amounts of money to try and buy success, Carlos Corberán has been able to take his team to the brink of the Premier League despite spending very little on transfer fees during his tenure.
Town overhauled their squad in the summer with a host of new arrivals but no money was spent on transfer fees, with all the new additions being free transfers or loans. Which was why nobody expected a huge improvement on Town’s 20th placed finish last season and everyone has been stunned how well we have done this season.
While there’s no trophy handed out for the team that has done the best without spending large amounts of money, it’s incredible to see how competitive this squad has been over the course of the season with so little money being spent on transfer fees.
Here’s a run down of how much Town’s squad have cost, separated into loans, frees, academy players and players we’ve spent money on.
Loanees
- Colwill
- Anjorin
- Sinani – loan with an option to buy this summer
- Mipo Odubeko
Like most Championship teams, Town have benefitted from taking on loan players from Premier League clubs. Levi Colwill and Danel Sinani in particular have been influential members of the squad and both have added a bit of quality when they’ve been on the pitch. Tino Anjorin has had a slower than hoped for recovery from his injury, which has meant he’s not featured all that much but I think the hope is that Chelsea will let us have him back next season. The only real flop in this group has been Mipo but that is always a risk when loaning youngsters and his opportunities were limited by Ward’s huge improvement this season.
It’s worth mentioning that we may have paid loan fees for some of these players. I know there were rumours we paid quite a lot of money for Smith Rowe’s half season when he played under Danny Cowley. He was obviously class and made a huge impact, with the current crop of loanees it’s harder to say if we paid significant fees or not. Colwill came with a big reputation from youth football but hadn’t ever played a professional game before arriving at Town, Sinani was unwanted at Norwich, Mipo barely played for us and Anjorin was injured when he arrived. I’d guess we haven’t broken the bank for any, but Chelsea might have been paid a fee for Colwill.
Free players
- Turton
- Pearson
- Lees
- Nicholls
- Blackman
- Ruffels
- Sarr
- Vallejo
- Russell
- Eiting
- Ward
- Rhodes
- Campbell
The majority of Town’s squad have been brought in as free agents and some of our best players have been picked up for nothing. Our recruitment team have shown they have a brilliant eye for picking out players that will fit within our squad, have good character and can compete at Championship level. Whether these freebies will be able to play at Premier League level is another matter but that’s something we can worry about if we win the playoff final.
Academy players
- Schofield
- O’Brien
- High
- Rowe
I’m a little bit surprised that there are so few academy players getting minutes in the first team. Schofield and Rowe managed 191 minutes in the Championship between them this season, so High and O’Brien are the only ones to have made a significant contribution. Last season there were 13 different players that made appearances from the youth team, so we’ve relied on youth a lot less.
The switch to the B Team system has yet to properly bear fruit for the team, but the host of players out on loan this season will no doubt be given a chance to prove their worth in preseason. Most will probably have to wait if we are promoted but if we stay in the Championship it should be possible to accommodate more youngsters in the squad.
Players Huddersfield Town paid a fee for
- Toffolo – undisclosed – widely rumoured £400k
- Pipa – undisclosed – £630k according to Transfermarkt
- Hogg – undisclosed – rumoured £400k
- Thomas – undisclosed – Matt from And He Takes That Chance podcast says he cost around £400k
- Holmes – Free with payments due on performance-related triggers
- Aarons – Nominal – Newcastle fan blog The Mag thinks most fees will be dependent on clauses which he almost certainly won’t have hit due to his shocking injury record
- Koroma – Undisclosed – The Sun said £500,000 at the time of his signing
Huddersfield Town paid transfer fees for just seven of the players that have played minutes for the first team this season. The tendency to not disclose transfer fees has made it hard to calculate exactly how much we’ve spent on this squad but none of them will have cost more than a million individually and many have come for a lot less than that.
The most expensive player in Town’s squad is likely to be Pipa but even that fee was low as he was a Spanish Under 21 international when we signed him and regarded as a hot prospect. His progress has been halted this season because of injuries but he could still be sold for a substantial profit if we needed to make some quick cash.
In fact, Jonathan Hogg is most likely the only player on that list that couldn’t be sold for a profit and that’s due to the fact that it’s nearly ten years since he arrived at Town and few would argue that we haven’t had our money’s worth out of him.
How much did Huddersfield Town’s squad cost in total?
Based on rough guesses and rumours, the current squad cost somewhere between £2.3m and £3m, depending on the performance related add ons we’ve agreed. To put that into context, this whole squad cost less in transfer fees than we paid for Florent Hadergjonaj and around half what we paid for Ramadan Sohbi in our Premier League years.
Our transfer business has been the cornerstone of this season’s success. It will be interesting to see what happens in the summer as we will need to make additions regardless of the division we play in. If we go up then it’s likely we will have to start shopping in a different market to acquire Premier League-level players and most likely will have to pay higher fees and wages. If we stay down then it may be hard to keep hold of some of our better players and recruiting high-quality replacements will be the priority.
It’s safe to say that our recruitment team got a lot of stick in the Premier League years, with some justification, but their recent business has been outstanding. Whether we are good enough to go up will be for the footballing gods to decide a week on Sunday but to even be in with a shout is quite remarkable.
Have you missed off Jon Russel here as an academy graduate?
Cheers 👍
I put him down as a free transfer rather than an academy player. Both him and Holmes could technically be down as academy players. Russell played in League One last season, so he’s not really a player we’ve brought through our system. With Holmes we may have paid some fee, so again doesn’t feel like he fits as a youth product now.
A consequence of changing the academy status is that you bring promising youngsters into the academy at different ages. Koroma came into the academy playing in the under 19’s and then the B team before going into the first team as did Jon Russell. Romani Edwards Green, Crichlow, Harratt, Diarra, Kamara and a number of others have trained with the first team, some having 1st team minutes, and have also gone out on loan to get league experience. A few of the old academy players like Daley and Austerfield have also had the above experiences this season with Austerfield getting glowing praise at Harrogate in the later part of the season. Josh Marsh has been one of the unsung heroes of our recent history in my opinion.
Good article TS plenty lot of research there!
Another aspect is arguably the costing of the recruitment of CC and his team; was compensation given to Leeds?
Retrospectively huge praise should be given to PH for renegotiating the coaching staff’s contracts although in the immediate aftermath that looked unwise.