We’re doomed! A pessimistic preview for Huddersfield Town’s 2025/26 season

I’ve already published my optimistic preview of the upcoming season, so what follows are all my negative and unpleasant thoughts. Given the current mood around the club, it feels a bit wrong to be applying a cynical perspective to a summer that has been overwhelmingly positive from a Town perspective. 

Having said that, the spring was diabolical for Town. We finished the season in relegation form and the team had completely imploded. Plenty has changed at Town since the final game of last season, a new manager, 12 players left, 11 players have arrived, a new coaching team has come in and a new philosophy is developing on the field. But it’s hard not to worry that all this might be yet another case of raised expectations that are ultimately dashed when cold, hard reality bites. 

So here’s the glass-half-empty preview of the upcoming season. Some of these points may need to be taken with a pinch of salt, as my genuine feeling is one of cautious optimism around Town. Though with Town there are always those nagging doubts that disaster is around the corner even in the most positive moments. 

There’s no creativity

Aside from the 5-3 victory over Lincoln, which was behind closed doors and not streamed, I’ve watched every minute of Town’s preseason. While it’s hardly been a footballing feast, it has been interesting to watch Lee Grant develop his squad into something approaching his vision. 

I’ve liked how solid we look at the back, the intensity of the press when we’ve gone hunting for the ball, the intricate passing plays when we’ve built up from the back and how we’ve tried to get the ball forward quickly. The main criticism I’ve had about all the friendlies I’ve watched has been the lack of creativity in the final third. 

While we’ve invested heavily (if erratically) in strikers in recent transfer windows, we lack the sort of players that can consistently load the gun for these strikers. Too often, when assessing our strikers, it’s been the same story of them working hard but having very little to feed off. In the time I’ve been writing this blog I must have said similar words around a thousand times and sadly that lack of creativity seems to still be present.

Lee Grant was the attacking coach at Ipswich, so this should be his area of specialism but so far Town haven’t had a lot of creativity or invention when they get close to the opposition penalty area. It’s not so much that we keep trying things that don’t work and more that we just don’t know what to do. It feels like everyone is waiting for someone else to add a bit of spark. 

There’s still time to fix this glaring issue in the transfer market but Lee Grant’s comments in his press conference suggest we’ve more or less finished our transfer business unless the right deals come along. 

Too many ch…ch…ch…changes

The need for change at Huddersfield Town has been clear since our relegation to League One and last year’s promised overhaul was hampered by our inability to shift out contracted players. 

The end of last season saw us clear out a lot of the players that were jaded from the bruising few seasons we’ve had lately and it made space for lots of new faces. The downside of changing the squad so much, alongside another change in manager and coaching staff, is that all this change will take time to bed in. 

While we all hope that Town have a great start to the season, it’s pretty common for teams that have such a large turnover to get settled. While what we’ve seen in preseason is encouraging and our signings look good on paper, nothing is certain until we start playing real games.

I read a book recently by Liverpool’s data guy (How To Win The Premier League by Ian Graham) and he suggested that around 50% of transfers are successful. So out of the eleven signings we’ve made, five or six could be flops. Though lately Town have probably been operating on a 75/25 ratio of flops to successes. Given the squad still includes (too) many of our previous transfer blunders, we can’t afford to have as many of this new batch fail 

We’ve been here before 

Last summer saw Town recruit seasoned League One players, many were Player of the Season for their previous clubs, most coming with high praise from pundits and fans of their former team. We had a new manager that was well regarded. We’d used preseason to develop a style of play that seemed well suited to the league. Many were predicting us to bounce straight back to the Championship.

But after things felt different for a while, those familiar patterns emerged again. The performances tailed off, then the results did too and then morale dropped through the floor. Even sacking the manager failed to improve things and we were abysmal by the end of the season.

So we should know not to get carried away just yet. While everything is very different at Town now, past performance is one of the best indicators of how we’ll fare this season. And chaos and calamity have been fairly consistent at Town in recent years even if the personnel has kept changing. 

Lee Grant is too inexperienced 

I’ve praised Lee Grant in my positive preview but I can’t give any data to back up this claim because he’s a complete beginner when it comes to managing. While he’s come with a reputation as a good coach, being number one is different and we don’t know how he’ll cope with that kind of pressure. 

I’ve only seen one moment that’s concerned me so far with Grant and it was tiny but could point in a worrying direction. I think it was Ruben Roosken that got something wrong against Burnley at the weekend and instead of giving him some sort of correction, either positively or negatively, Grant clapped his hands and gave some bland encouragement. A nothing moment in a meaningless game but it raised concerns that he may struggle to deal with players that aren’t following his instructions. 

Quite a few recent Town managers have resembled a supply teacher that can’t control their class, blandly issuing instructions that are completely ignored by the players. Darren Moore was guilty of this, Danny Schofield didn’t seem to be taken seriously as a head coach and even Michael Duff, who isn’t a pushover, frequently complained that his players would do what he wanted on the training pitch but then wouldn’t bother when in a match situation. 

When the sun is shining and preseason is in full swing, players are pliant and willing to take on board new ideas. When the season is properly under way and players doubt their manager’s wisdom, they’ll often start ignoring their instructions and doing whatever they like. Town fans know what this is like very well from the “team of individuals” problem we’ve had in multiple seasons. Can Grant cope if this new group turns sour on him?

Lee Grant sounds impressive when he talks but he also sounds like he’s listened to a few too many Steven Bartlett and Jake Humphreys podcasts. The language of business focussed, self-help gurus doesn’t translate that well to a football dressing room and Grant will need to show he has a bit of steel as well as being able to talk technical guff.

Many of our fans are toxic 

I don’t think I’m exempt from this accusation, but Town fans as a group have not been all that pleasant in recent years. The experience of supporting a team that has mostly failed every season for quite a long time has led to a deeply disillusioned and skeptical set of fans. While I think a vocal minority of fans are the worst offenders, across the board things can get pretty negative when things go against us. 

The jeering of Freddie Ladapo, the social media abuse aimed at Kevin Nagle and the sheer number of games where players were booed off the pitch are just three examples of fans turning on the club in unproductive ways. So much so that there were rumours last season that some players pretty much hated the fans (Matty Pearson’s shushing of the Town fans didn’t help suppress this story). 

While the fans aren’t directly involved in the results on the pitch, they do help to set the mood around the team. If Town don’t hit the ground running this season then it’s pretty unlikely that the fans will have much patience with this new regime. And sadly, our owner is closely plugged into the mood of the fans via platforms that feature our most extreme fans. Nagle, inadvisably in my view, likes to interact with fans on X despite that platform more broadly being a cesspit and I believe his friend Carmichael Dave’s responsibilities are mostly to do with checking on the vibe of the fans (I’d be interested to know if his role is unpaid, funded by the club or out of Nagle’s own pocket). So the most outspoken fans that spout their views online have an outsized influence on the owner, which will then filter down through the club.

After years of false dawns and repeated failures, it’s understandable that Town fans are bruised and delicate. The increase in season card prices may have pushed away some of our grumpiest fans but I suspect that the current positive feeling around the club will evaporate quickly if results aren’t great. Even losing to a Premier League team in a preseason friendly was enough to have some fans throwing their toys out of the pram. 

Are things really this bleak for Huddersfield Town this season? 

Despite having a good moan in this article, my overall feeling is one of positivity. Things had to change at Huddersfield Town this summer and they have. This amount of change makes it hard to be certain of what will happen but so far it feels like we’ve made positive moves, both in the transfer market and on the pitch. Lee Grant is an unknown quantity but that carries the promise of success as much as there’s a risk of failure. 

One thing that is guaranteed for Huddersfield Town is that it will be an interesting season. Whether it’s for the right or wrong reasons, who knows? But after a few months of no meaningful football, I’m excited to see what happens next. And of course, I’ll be writing about it all on this blog regardless of results. 

Want to cheer yourself up? Read my optimistic preview of Huddersfield Town’s 2025/26 season.