After weeks and weeks of very little happening with Huddersfield Town, there has been a flurry of activity in the last week or so. To avoid clogging up people’s feeds with umpteen separate articles, I’ve decided to do a roundup of all these goings on in one post.
In this article you can read about Northern Football, Town’s two new boys, season card sales, various transfer rumours and details of the upcoming preseason. Enjoy!
Du, du, du, du, Northern football!
Have you ever heard someone tell a joke and it gets huge laughs and then when you try the same joke out on a different group it goes down like a poo in a swimming pool? Well, that’s more or less what happened to Kevin Nagle last week.
Nagle was the subject of light ridicule last week when he talked with Oggy on Radio Leeds about the absence of “Northern football” being one of Town’s principle problems last season. I feel a bit sorry for Kev here though, as he was repeating the theory Lee Grant had impressed him with in his job interview. I can imagine how Lee Grant’s polished and authoritative explanation about “Northern Football” would have gone down a storm with the interview panel but when Kevin tried to regurgitate the concept back in a slightly hostile radio interview, it came across as a bit odd.
While it was scoffed at initially, I think the idea of “Northern football” is as good an idea to get behind as any other. While it’s not been clearly defined yet, I imagine it means a no-nonsense, blood and thunder approach to playing the game that has definitely been missing from Town since Neil Warnock left. While Michael Duff talked a good game, the football his Town teams played was often limp and valued control over having a proper go at the opposition.
I think the reason Lee Grant hasn’t talked about this concept himself yet is because he’ll want to demonstrate it on the pitch first. But I’m actually quite looking forward to seeing the way he sets up the team. I was worried our next manager would be a tiki-take zealot, with sideways and backwards passes the norm but for now it seems like Grant wants to play a more straightforward style that is suited to both the league we’re in and the players we have. Northern Football may have sounded silly at first but I’m looking forward to hearing the fans chanting about it when the crunching tackles start flying in.
Strap yourself in for Harness at Huddersfield Town
Town announced the signing of Marcus Harness earlier this week, on a free transfer after his deal ran out at Ipswich Town. While he was on loan at Derby in the Championship last season, he has previously worked closely with Lee Grant in Ipswich’s back-to-back promotion seasons with the winger being part of the attacking group Grant coached.
This signing feels like a bit of a coup, as there was apparently Championship interest in him (though we hear that line a lot about new signings). His willingness to drop down a level was most likely driven by money more than “the project” at Town or Lee Grant’s personal sway on him but he did speak glowingly of Grant in his interview, so our new manager may have been a factor.
Harness hasn’t got incredible stats in terms of goals and assists but they are consistently decent and he’s been doing it in the league above in recent seasons. It feels pretty likely that he’ll be a useful asset to the team and can play on either wing or as a number ten. His character and experience also make him an attractive option, with him having promotions on his CV and seemingly being a decent guy.
While this signing might not set pulses racing immediately, it feels like a smart bit of business and we’ll hopefully see Lee Grant get the best out of him. The three year contract we’ve given him may be a year longer than I would have liked but it was probably necessary to get the deal over the line.
Ryan Ledson fills the Hogg-shaped hole in midfield
The other signing Town have secured so far is Ryan Ledson from Preston North End, again on a free transfer. He’s a no-nense, tough-tackling defensive midfielder and from clips it looks like he can pick out forward passes and execute them well from deep areas. Ledson looks like a proponent of “Northern football” and will be a useful character to have in the dressing room. The most common thing PNE fans said about him was how dedicated and hard working he is. So yeah, a Hogg replacement but he’s in his mid-twenties rather than mid-thirties.
This might not say very much about me, but the most exciting thing about Ledson is the way he flies into tackles and the aggression he brings to the pitch. Sometimes, last season, Town looked like they were playing a kick about in the park where nobody really cared about the score they just wanted to have a nice time. Ledson isn’t like that, he’s a bit of a piece of work from what I can tell. But that can be a good thing when it’s controlled and done in the right way (though he did pretty much end Tommy Elphick’s career with a bad tackle when he played against Town).
I fully expect that Ledson will storm into the first day of preseason training, give Lasse Sorensen a Chinese burn, steal Bojan Radulovic’s lunch money and offer to fight any squad member that fancies their chances. Which is the type of character we need in the dressing room to drive standards and keep everyone on their toes.
Season card sales
Kevin Nagle said in his interview with the club’s internal media team that he was pleased with the season card sales surge that occured when Lee Grant was announced. The online booking system told a different story though, as the seat picker screen shows all the available seats as blue dots. There are an awful lot of blue dots throughout the stadium.
I’ve got better things to do than to count every grey dot to try and estimate the overall season ticket sales but it looks like the takeup has been pretty poor so far. The prices are currently frozen at the season card renewal rate, so there could be a late flurry of sales but it seems likely that that stadium will feel a bit empty at the start of next season.
It’s a shame, when there feels to be some positivity coming back to the club, that many fans won’t actually be in the stadium to witness this next chapter in the Kevin Nagle era at Town. While I can’t blame fans for struggling to justify a 70ish% price rise to watch a team that have only disappointed in recent years.
Maybe those fans that aren’t renewing will pay on the gate if things are going well on the pitch and may even get a half season card at Christmas time if they worry they’re missing out on a special season. That all assumes that things are going to go well on the pitch though and we know that’s never certain.
Staggering these price hikes over a few seasons, or waiting until there were solid signs of improvement on the pitch before raising the cost would have made better business sense. Keeping hold of the fans you have is much easier than winning back the ones you’ve lost.
I’m no economist but I think the problem that Town have with season card pricing can be nicely summed up by Stringer Bell from The Wire, in the clip below. He’s talking about a different industry to football but the principles of price elasticity hold true I think.
Rumour roundup
Just to be clear, I don’t have any inside information or connections for reliable transfer gossip. If I’m honest, I find the rumour mill a bit tedious. But in the absence of real football to enjoy, it’s hard not to scour the web for the latest rumblings about Town.
With Town having a lot of vacancies in their squad to fill and a decent sized budget for this league, we’re likely to be connected with plenty of players over the summer. Sometimes these will be genuine and other times they’ll be chancers trying to make it sound like they know what they’re doing. Even some semi-respected journalists seem to occasionally apply a bit of artistic licence to their stories about transfer, just to eke out as many column inches as possible.
Having said that, here’s what is currently doing the rounds about Town in the transfer market:
- Fraser Horsfall opts for Blackpool over Town – It seemed like an obvious fit when our former academy graduates deal at Stockport was expiring in a summer where we don’t currently have a fit central defender on the books. Unfortunately, gone to Blackpool on a four-year deal, seemingly swayed by Steve Bruce. While we know that Steve Bruce has a way with words, thanks to his side-gig as a novelist, I think the long contract Blackpool offered him was probably the deciding factor (assuming Town had offered him a contract too, as the rumour mill reported).
- Paudie O’Connor is a name that has repeatedly been linked to Town and seems to be the kind of player we want. He’s captained Lincoln City, so is a leader and is experienced at our level. He’s also out of contract so would mean any funds available for transfer fees can be used elsewhere.
- Michael Smith from Sheffield Wednesday has also been mentioned as a potential big lad up top that Town might be interested in. Kevin Nagle has suggested we’re in the market for a carthorse sort of striker who can bully opposition defences, so he might fit the bill.
- Ross Wilson has turned down an approach from Town to come back to the club as a sporting director or head of football operations or whatever you want to call it. It seemed odd he’d want to leave Nottingham Forest when they’re doing well but I suppose their owner is a bit bonkers and there must have been some interest from him to justify the rumours. Executives in most industries have fairly restrictive clauses in their contracts that stop them jumping ship to a rival, so that could have been a complication too. While we’re not a threat to Forest, they could have used that as a justification for stopping him leaving.
Austria again for preseason
Town’s preseason is starting to take shape now, with the usual trip to Emley scheduled for 28th June and a week in Austria booked from 13th to 20th July. No matches have been lined up yet but there should be two friendlies against other clubs that are also having training camps out there.
I’ve never been on one of these preseason trips before but they look like a lot of fun. It’s the only way we’re going to see Town compete in Europe for the foreseeable future and it looks like a lovely part of the world to visit. The club usually makes a big effort to engage with the travelling fans and it will give us a glimpse of what we can expect from Lee Grant and the new-look Terriers. Those without the money or time to swan off around Europe watching Town will probably be able to watch a stream of the game online through the club’s official channels.
What’s next at Huddersfield Town
Hopefully we’ll see a steady stream of transfer activity at Town, so we can have most of our squad assembled when they come in for preseason towards the end of this month. As well as that….
- Lee Grant will shortly confirm his backroom team
- The new Castore kits will be announced soon
- Our preseason fixtures will be confirmed
- The fixtures will come out on 26 June
And one thing that won’t be happening soon will be the stadium ownership being transferred to only Huddersfield Town. Complications with Ken Davy’s purchase of The Shay stadium as a temporary home for the Giants and wrangling between Davy and the council over the long-term home of the rugby team have kicked the whole thing into the long grass. This may restrict some of Kevin Nagle’s more ambitious development ideas for the stadium and its surrounding land but hopefully won’t impact the day-to-day running of the stadium.
Thanks for the ‘northern’ round-up, TS.
We know I’m sure that this ‘northern’ thing is a load of tosh. But I suppose it’s something new to say. For me, it just means a lot more yellow cards with some turning into red. What’s the point in that?
Nothing has emerged (yet) that moves me upwards or downwards on the ‘optimism barometer’. That in itself I suppose should be seen as a positive as in recent months, the glass was falling at an alarming rate. The jury remains out. Once there’s a squad to evaluate, that will be the time to pass judgement.
I think the “Northern Football” is no better or worse than the Wagner Revolution stuff we did around David Wagner. Though Wagner had shown signs of delivering by the time we did that. This feels a bit premature. It’s better than the “Working. Class. Club.” slogan we had a while ago.
I felt pretty despondent by the time the season had finished but all these changes mean it will definitely be different into he upcoming season. That doesn’t mean better but at least we’ll be finding new and interesting ways to fail if we struggle again.
My biggest worry is that we’ve put an inexperienced manager in and bit given him an experienced Director of Football to guide him. This may seem like a masterstroke if Grant does well but at the moment it seems risky.
Cheers TS.
Reading you with coffee in my Town mug – which is a sign of my (slightly) more positive outlook after the past few days’ news.
Like the look/sound of O’Connor.
As Simon says(!) early days and we’ll know more when we know more.
I’ve been drinking out of my Andy Booth mug today which must be 20 years old, so I must be feeling positive too!
I find transfers at Town’s current level odd. Because I’ve often not heard of them before the rumours start but after a few days of speculation these unknowns suddenly feel like players we must sign to avoid certain failure. But, having said that, O’Connor does sound like what we need.
What’s happening with Sobra Thomas
He finished his loan in the French top flight and unless they take up the option to buy we agreed with them, he’ll be back at Canalside with the rest of them. It seems inconceivable that he’d actually play for us next season but if Grant likes the look of him and nobody puts in a bid then it’s possible.
It’s good that we are getting new faces in but it’s not midfielders we are desperate for. Maybe what we have haven’t shown the quality we needed but they are available to start. As TS points out we have one central defender on the books and he has been fragile at best . Playing full backs as central defenders didn’t work last season so I’m pretty sure it won’t work next season either. The B team has been decimated even more than the first team so I’m not sure that there are any central defenders lurking there either. So it looks likely we need to sign at least four and to get that number with the quality we need is a tall order in this window. I think when I checked we had 10 registered B team players and thats after the return of loanees like Kyle Hudlin so not much to work with there it seems. We need another goal keeper although we do have Francis Hurl but not sure if that’s a plan . I hate to be negative but this window really is make or break get it wrong and we will struggle . Get it right and the promised land awaits . No pressure
I don’t follow the B Team closely but it does seem like it’s dried up as a source of first team players. I doubt we’ll invest heavily in the B Team when the first team needs such a lot of recruitment and the younger academy groups need filling too.
I feel like most of our recent transfer windows have been make or break but this one feels like the biggest one for a long time. With a new manager and no director of football. It might be fine.
9 weeks on Saturday it all starts again. Not much time to get in at leat 6 players and get them up to speed.