Why I’m Warming to Huddersfield Town’s Appointment of Martin Drury

Huddersfield Town have announced Martin Drury as their new head coach, following Liam Manning’s recent departure from the club. After overseeing the last seven games of the season as a caretaker management duo with Jon Stead, Drury now takes the reins full time with Stead his assistant. 

While Drury doesn’t have vast experience as a head coach, he did impress with the style of play and straight talking media work when he was caretaker. While the results weren’t quite what we needed during that spell, it was the kind of football that we’ve been promised by previous managers but haven’t consistently seen. 

I wrote about our vacancy last week and said that I would prefer Town to appoint someone with more experience but now the job has been given to Drury, I’m willing to get behind the new head coach and wish him all the best.

Here are a few more of my thoughts on this appointment.

What qualities will Martin Drury bring?

It’s too early to say how Drury will shape up in the long term but from observing him during the caretaker spell, there were some things I really liked about his approach. Here’s a quick list…

• He demands intensity from players. On several separate occasions, I saw him telling the players when they weren’t giving enough for him. This sounds minor but both Duff and Grant had a tendency to stand back when their gameplan unravelled rather than telling players directly what they should be doing.
• He explains himself clearly to the press. All managers slip into their familiar stock phrases eventually when talking to the media (Grant: “The group”, Duff: “It’s hard to win a game of football”, Moore: “Part and partial”) but Drury did seem to offer genuine insight when he talked to the press. More importantly, the tactics he described made sense for the games we were playing in, rather than sounding like he was hocking up bits of a coaching manual like cats bring up fur balls.
• A front-footed, attacking style of football. We’ve talked a lot about how we want to play a certain way over the last few years but have rarely delivered it. Drury and Stead’s games in charge did tend to be interesting to watch and have plenty of goals, even if some of those goals were going in the wrong way. I know some fans prefer a solid defensive base first and attacking flair second but if we’re all going to sink hundreds of hours of our lives watching Town, it would be nice if they at least tried to entertain occasionally.
• A closer connection with the fans. Ultimately, results are the biggest factor in whether fans connect with a manager or not, but there are other elements to this too. With Drury being from Huddersfield and supporting the club himself, I can see he gets what fans here are like, maybe more than the owner and his “advisor” on these matters. Being a Town fan isn’t the only reason to give him the job, otherwise everyone reading this article might also think they deserve a crack at it too (not unthinkable given the rate we rattle through managers).
• Tactical knowledge. Most Town fans will be aware of Carlos Corberan’s meticulous approach to his work, so it should be reassuring that Corberan appointed Drury to his backroom team at both West Brom and Valencia. He was plunged into a specific scenario at the end of last season with little time on the training pitch to change too much. With a full preseason and the ability to shape the squad to his vision, I’m hoping we’ll see more of his tactical side come out next season.
• Immaculate grooming. Not the most important thing but Martin Drury does have an unquestionably neat beard and well-trimmed hair. You could stretch the point to suggest this indicates a methodical and perfectionist approach that will translate well to the pitch but in reality, it’s just nice to have a manager who looks sharp.

What experience does he have?

It’s not technically true to say that Martin Drury doesn’t have any experience as a head coach/manager. He managed Bradford Park Avenue from April 2015 to March 2016 in National League North, where they finished mid-table. While that experience was several steps down the football pyramid, he’s also been in charge at Bradford City as a caretaker manager. He was in charge for one game, where they were hammered 5-1 by Plymouth. As Lee Grant liked to say after defeats, I’m sure he took away plenty of learnings from that experience.

Drury’s playing career was fairly unexceptional, starting at Doncaster, then playing for Sheffield Wednesday, Gainsborough, Belper Town (which sounds made up) and Bradford Park Avenue before being forced to retire at 28 through injury. I’m not convinced that success as a player converts cleanly into success as a manager, so I’ve no concerns about Drury’s lack of elite football experience as a player. If anything, it means he’ll understand the psychology of lower-league players more than if he’d a cupboard full of medals.

Drury’s coaching career is the most respectable part of his CV, with a short stint at Bradford Park Avenue leading him to Bradford City where between 2016 and 2022 he had various roles, many involving working in youth football. 

In 2022 he went across the Pennines to work at Manchester United’s academy before Carlos Corberan brought him to West Brom in 2024. He followed Carlos to Valencia in early 2025 and was highly regarded by Corberan for his one-on-one work with players. He left that role to coach at Brentford in the Premier League last summer but only lasted in that job a short while before quitting to go back to Valencia due to the Brentford job not being what he was promised. 

Drury joined Liam Manning’s backroom team in January of this year and you probably know the rest. 

After a settled spell at Bradford, he’s had a busy few years with plenty of jobs in a short space of time. This is natural in football these days but I hope that being a head coach at his home town club will encourage him to settle in this job. 

Why has Stead stepped back?

As they managed the team as an equal pair during their caretaker spell, it’s notable that Jon Stead is now the assistant and Drury is the head coach. It may have been possible for them to continue with this arrangement full-time but I personally prefer the club to have a more clearly defined management structure. While there’s nothing wrong with Jon Stead, I think it just makes sense for one person to have the top job and they’re in charge of making decisions.

While it’s an oversimplification, my impression from their caretaker spell was that Drury was the tactics guy and Stead was the vibes guy. While I’m sure both were involved in each of these aspects of management, it did seem that Drury was the one doing more thinking and Stead was doing more feeling. Hopefully, with Drury in the top job, this dynamic can stay the same and I suspect Stead will be given more authority than a typical assistant coach. 

It was said that the Cowleys were basically a management team, with Nicky being an assistant in name only and Danny saw him as his equal. I even heard a rumour that they pool their wages and split them equally, but never saw it confirmed. It could be that a similar power-sharing arrangement is in place for Stead and Drury, but I doubt Drury will be sharing his wage with Stead. 

Now give him a chance

My final thought on this appointment is that Martin Drury now needs to be given a chance. We’ve rattled through managers at a great pace recently and we now have a culture where losing three games in a row seems to automatically trigger a campaign to sack the manager. If the senior leadership at Town have seen something in Drury that makes them think he’s the best candidate they need to follow through on that conviction, even when times get tough. 

I’m really sick of constantly having to adjust to new managers and new philosophies at Huddersfield Town. I’d now like a settled spell where we build something for the future. That can involve a few short-term knockbacks and require patience but consistency in management does have a tendency to pay off in the long term. 

Another way Drury needs support is in the transfer market. He made allusions to the obvious imbalance in our squad in the season that’s just finished. To address that there will need to be some wheeling and dealing in the transfer market, which is likely to involve cutting our losses on the multiple failed gambles we’ve made in past transfer windows. We may have tighter financial restrictions under the new rules that were recently announced but there should be some leeway to rejig things and have a more evenly balanced squad that gives Drury more flexibility in the way we play. 

TerrierSpirit.com opinion on Martin Drury’s appointment

Drury wouldn’t have been my first choice for this vacancy but now he’s got the job I must say that I’m not too disappointed at all. I suspect most fans will be happy too, judging by the backlash in the comments section of my last article, with dozens of people suggesting he and Stead are the best people for the job. 

I liked the football that Drury and Stead had Town playing at the end of last season and I felt like both Drury and Stead talked a lot of sense in the media. The fact they’ve been in the club since January and had a brief spell in charge already also means there should be less disruption when they come back for preseason. 

After gambling on an inexperienced manager last summer, in Lee Grant, it feels like taking the same gamble again by appointing Drury. While there are indicators that he could be a very good head coach, this was also true of Lee Grant and we saw how that worked out. I suppose, if you keep gambling, your numbers have to come up sometime. Hopefully, this will be the appointment that finally works out for us and we’ll see a return to happy times at the ACCU Stadium.