Huddersfield Town’s latest signing could hint towards future transfer plans  

Huddersfield Town signed Jon Russell for their B Team following his release from Chelsea earlier this summer. Despite being on loan at Accrington Stanley last season and playing first team football in League One he will initially start off in Jon Worthington’s B Team rather than going straight into the first team. 

This acquisition might hint at the long-term plan to use the B Team to bed in players rather than spending money on established players that are ready for the first team. A bit like buying green bananas and ripening them yourself rather than buying ones that are ready to eat. Since Town revamped their youth system and got rid of their younger academy age groups they have relied on recruiting players from other club’s academies but it’s unusual for them to bring in players as old as Russell, particularly those that have already had a taste of first team football. But it might be a good idea as he’ll be closer to being up to the level of the first team. 

What kind of player is Jon Russell? 

According to Chelsea’s website: “He is a very tall, box-to-box midfield player who can also play as a number 10 and has a great eye for a pass.” He joined Chelsea at the age of seven, so has lots of experience of their excellent coaching setup. 

He played 25 games at Accrington Stanley last season but only completed the full 90 in five of those games. He scored two goals for them (and another for Chelsea’s youth team in the Papa John’s Trophy) and has an average rating of 6.46 out of 10 on Who Scored, which suggests he wasn’t out of his depth at that level but wasn’t outstanding either. 

Digging into his stats a little bit more, his pass completion rate was just 69.5%, which suggests it’s an area for him to work on. This number is most likely on the low side because of the frantic nature of League One and the system he was playing in. The pass completion rate for the whole Accrington Stanley team was 64% last season, so it suggests they’re not a team that taps it about at the back much. In contrast, Huddersfield Town’s pass average completion rate was 79% which isn’t hard to understand for those of us that were regularly bored to tears by watching central defenders endlessly roll the ball back and forth to each other last session. 

I’m not pulling out these passing numbers to say he’s rubbish, more to highlight that it will take time for him to adjust to our way of playing and we might need to be patient. 

The club got the announcement right 

I’m pleased that Russell was clearly announced as a B Team acquisition. Often the desire for clicks and attention leads to these kinds of singings being blown out of proportion. “Chelsea starlet arrives at Town!” might get more interest initially but saddles the player with unrealistic expectations of when they’ll feature in the first team. 

Danny Grant and Sorba Thomas are recent examples of when this message hasn’t been quite as clear. Both started at Town in the B Team but their announcements made it seem like they would go straight into the matchday squad. 

Is this the sign of things to come? 

I have a feeling that we could see more and more of these kind of signings in the future, particularly if we can build a track record of bringing our B Team players through to the first team (arguably Koroma is the first good example since the B Team came in). 

Football clubs are always looking for a way to get an edge over each other and it seems our hope is that we can pick up quality players that aren’t quite good enough for the highest level but with a bit of development they can establish themselves at Championship level or even be sold for a large fee once we’ve brought them through. 

While good scouting helps to pick out the gems, this approach is not much more than a series of small-scale bets. Some players won’t make the step up, others will flourish. The trick is to be able to get enough value out of the successes to justify the expense of paying the duds until their inevitable release.

While Town are operating under a tight budget this seems like as good a strategy as any. You could argue that it involves shopping in the bargain bin but I think there are plenty of very good footballers that get ditched by top academies and we can take advantage of this if we can identify and attract them to our club. 

Is the B Team model working for Huddersfield Town? 

Even though we’re a few years on from the switch to a B Team and the scrapping of the younger age groups, it’s still hard to say if the change has paid off yet. I believed the club when they said the old model wasn’t working because Premier League clubs would snap up our most promising kids we’d spent years developing and they only have to pay a relatively small compensation fee. 

I think we could soon see a steady flow of players coming out of the B Team and making it in the first team but our business this summer shows we’re not intending on relying on youth players too much this season. The players we’ve brought in have been mostly to improve the quality of our backup options, which shows the club understand the Championship is too high a level to chuck in untested kids. 

At times last season we gave debuts to young players when it was too soon in their development and it didn’t help either the player or the team. Ben Jackson had something like seven touches in the fifty minutes or so he played in midfield in our opening game against Norwich. Not his fault, he’s obviously got a lot of potential but he wasn’t ready and a loan to League Two was much more beneficial for him (which he got towards the end of last season). Similarly Kieran Philips and Pat Jones both got more minutes on the pitch than were needed to see they both most likely need a loan as a stepping stone before playing in the Championship. 

I can’t pull out a name that proves the B Team system is worth it. Lewis O’Brien and Ryan Schofield are the academy products that have most recently cemented regular starting roles for Town but both progressed through the now scrapped age ranks before becoming professionals. However, there are plenty of youngsters in our academy that could break through to the first team but it may be two or three seasons before they’re good enough to be first team regulars. We may have to be patient, which isn’t a virtue football fans are famous for.