Wembley Stadium beckoned. After 120 minutes of football had produced no more than a stalemate between two promotion candidates, the tie would be decided by penalties and Huddersfield Town would reign victorious. No, this is not a re-telling of Monday’s events, this is in fact where the Yorkshire outfit’s remarkable journey began - the 2012 League One Playoff Final.
Since promotion to England’s second tier five years ago, Huddersfield had failed to finish above 16th in the Championship, often being tipped as relegation candidates at the start of each campaign. After navigating their way past the prolific Sheffield Wednesday and disciplined Reading in the playoffs, however, the Terriers will taste Premier League football for the first time in their history.
Next term, the Kirklees Stadium is to welcome the likes of Antonio Conte’s Chelsea and Jose Mourinho’s Manchester United, just 15 years since the club were on the brink of liquidation. How they did it is an intriguing story.
Although a manager can’t take all of the credit for victory nor all the blame for defeat, his role in a season such as Huddersfield's is often underrated. David Wagner was brought in from the Borussia Dortmund reserves in November 2015, with Huddersfield lingering in the depths of relegation.
It was a struggle but the quick-thinking German steered the club away from the drop zone to finish 19th come the end of the 2015/16 campaign. His start-of-season preparations last summer, however, suggested that he wasn’t looking to merely stave of relegation again this past season.
Wagner would aid the signings of thirteen players at the start of the season, including the likes of club record signing Chris Schindler from 1860 Munich for £1.8 million and Elias Kachunga, the club’s eventual top scorer for the term with 12 goals. There was nothing scattergun about this approach though; Huddersfield Town went on to use fewer players over the course of the season than any other team.
In the wake of his side’s trip to Sweden before last campaign, Wagner announced, “I’m not a dreamer, I’m a worker” and everything about Huddersfield’s pre-season echoed that - every detail was scrutinised to within an inch of its life. The trip didn’t involve a football, with Wagner claiming, "We were really in the wild, no electricity, no toilet, no bed, no mobile phone or internet.” The German continued, “I am convinced that the better you know your mate off your pitch, the more you are able to work for him on it in uncomfortable situations”.
It instilled the team with a ‘survivalist mentality’ which spanned the first six games during which they won five and drew one. From that point onwards, the club became experts in stringing together long winning runs and fell out of the playoff positions just once throughout the entirety of the campaign.
What strikes Championship followers the most regarding Huddersfield’s fairytale campaign is that they secured a playoff spot and eventual promotion, despite finishing the normal season with a -2 goal difference, with Wagner’s Terriers conceding as many goals as 15th place Wolves and 16th place Ipswich Town respectively.
The club experienced the odd spanking as part of this, losing to Fulham 9-1 on aggregate across the two games they played against the Cottagers and being dismantled 4-0 by Bristol City at Ashton Gate in March, but what counted was the response and Huddersfield’s Terrier-like mentality became key in edging games. Wagner reinforced this by claiming, “We are not the biggest dog, we are small, but we are aggressive, we are not afraid…this small dog has fighting spirit for sure”.
Of course, you can’t have such success purely on the basis of a good mindset though and Wagner’s acute tactical knowledge coupled with the players’ disciplined application of this was the winning formula in the end. Huddersfield won a large handful of games this term by a single goal and in some respects it was the successful 4-2-3-1 formation which limited the goal return, with Kachunga and Wells seldom partnering each other through the centre.
The industrious, unseen work of Jonathan Hogg and loanee Aaron Mooy in the holding midfield roles provided the front four with more freedom to create in the final third and pairings like this and that of Michael Hefele and Chris Schindler at the heart of defence proved to make all the difference. The German defenders had developed a telepathic understanding of one another and such spirit permeated the team as a whole.
Apart from Fulham, no other side in the league bettered Huddersfield’s score for overall passing and possession for the season on Squawka Statistics (22,541) and there was certainly elements of ‘Gegenpressing’, a tactical approach coined by Wagner’s former coaching superior Jurgen Klopp, present in the Terriers’ game. Winning possession and maintaining it was central to a style which gravitated towards turning potential draws into one-goals wins.
As the points accumulated, critics were silenced and there was little to suggest that Ian Holloway’s relegation prediction for Huddersfield would come to fruition. It was ultimately a combination of smart spending, sound team bonding and tactical astuteness which meant that this little club from Yorkshire would have the last laugh in the dog-eat-dog world of the Championship. See you next year Terriers!
