Barriers to Huddersfield Town striker transfer hunt discussed amid rivals’ example

Our Terriers podcast Ooh To Be A Terrier will be following the new season once again throughout the next nine months, and with the opening-day trip to Plymouth coming up, it felt like the ideal time to take another look at the state of the squad and what their capabilities may be in the season ahead.

Huddersfield Town are particularly keen to add a centre-forward to what they already have, but are fans’ expectations unrealistic? What do they need? And can they get by without that signing if the wait goes deeper into the transfer window?

What follows is a transcript of the discussion we had on the topic. You can subscribe to the podcast via Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts by searching for “Ooh To Be A Terrier” – or click here to listen to or download the latest episode directly.

Hartrick: “I think some fans think they need a striker who’s going to come in and score 20 goals, whereas I think potentially they need at least one, maybe two players who come in and helps everyone in that unit get 5-10, and suddenly instead of getting 20 goals from one person, you’ve got 45-50 goals from your attacking line, which is where you need to be.”

Chicken: “… Apart from Luciano Becchio at Leeds United, [Warnock] hasn’t really had that kind of talismanic [goalscoring] striker in any of his sides – and he got sold midway through the season! So he’s never [in at least the past 15 years] really built his sides around having that 15-goal player – but what he has had is exactly what you’ve just said.

“If you look at his Cardiff promotion winning team, his Middlebrough team, whoever you like…the top scorer will get 10-12 goals, then there will be a half a dozen who are all on five, six, seven, eight goals.

“Town just didn’t have [that] last season: they had a few players who should really have been up there, you would have hoped would be up there…Jack Rudoni I’m thinking of in particular, but also Josh Koroma who they sent out on loan for half the season because he was rubbish, then he came back and he was brilliant.

“I do understand the misgivings about where the goals are going to come from [and people saying] ‘this is the same squad as last year, they struggled to score goals, so where is it going to come from’ – but I do think there are goals in that team if they can find a way to unlock them.

“… The other thing is that money is a factor. Centre-forwards are always the most expensive players, and this summer it seems particularly expensive. I saw the other day a report about Tom Cannon from Everton being linked with Preston: 20 years old, went out on loan to Preston last year and scored eight goals in 20 games – pretty good return, to be fair. But Everton are asking for a £1m loan fee for him, on top of his wages. It’s not just us saying that’s expensive: the general reporting has been that that’s fairly hefty as a loan fee.

“However, I do accept that you will look around the division and see, say, Ellis Simms going to Coventry [and wonder why Town can’t do similar]. I would say, I’ve talked about the finances a few weeks ago and how FFP is potentially a factor, [although] there were a lot of hypotheticals in there to do with what this season’s spend is going to be … but the other thing is that the EFL are keeping a much closer eye on owners in their first year at a club now – there are new measures in place. You asked me the other week if they have to stick to the business plan they’ve submitted, and I believe the answer to that is basically ‘yes, they do’.

“… [A lot of fans] seem quite down in the mouth at the moment … and I can see the possibility that the soothsayers of doom may well be correct, because there’s a lot of ‘ifs’ there about whether they can get goals out of Jack Rudoni, Sorba Thomas, Josh Koroma. We’ve not even really mentioned set pieces, which will be a big factor, but what if those dry up? I could see a world where Jack Rudoni only scores twice again, where Sorba Thomas goes all season without scoring, where we get the bad Josh Koroma who’s been stuck in the Black Lodge for the last six months and has now emerged to wreak havoc on his own team by being not very good.

“I think it’s possible that happens, and I think that’s the version of Town that is in people’s heads. But I think I would say to those people…just consider the possibility it might go the other way as well. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they’ll get 21 points from their first ten games of next season like they did from the last ten games of last season, but they might be more like that team than the team that lost at Blackpool, Wigan and Stoke.”