Huddersfield Daily Examiner

Town’s £15m Grant gamble has paid off...

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known this was coming down the line, we’re sure there are plenty of decisions that every club would have made differentl­y.

That particular­ly applies to the January transfer window – would you have signed this player so urgently if you knew the injured player they’ve been drafted in to replace would have extra time to get back to full fitness, or sanctioned big money to sign that player to aid your promotion push if you had known the season might well never be finished?

Terriers chairman Phil Hodgkinson shares our assessment that a deflation or even a collapse in transfer values seems likely to be on its way with football clubs suddenly finding themselves unexpected­ly strapped for cash.

“A large proportion of our projected revenue for next season was based on transfers,” he explained. “That will be the case for the vast majority of clubs outside the Premier League and some in it. The vast majority of your projected income is based on player sales.”

Town’s big what-if comes from that £15m bid for Karlan Grant that they turned down in January. The forward is Town’s prize asset and we suspect it’s not even close: the rest of Town’s potentiall­y top flight-capable players are either on loan from Premier League clubs, largely unproven, or in the autumns of their careers.

Terriers chief exec Mark Devlin expects that interest in Grant to return. “Let’s be really honest, a guy like Karlan is going to attract interest – goalscorer­s will attract interest and I have no doubt Karlan will be feted in the summer,” he told us reecently.

He added: “We know there is interest out there and we will deal with it when it comes to it.

“This doesn’t mean he will necessaril­y leave us, but we will do what is right for the club at the end of the day, in conjunctio­n with talking to the player.”

Grant’s goals have been absolutely invaluable to Town this season, with Cowley admitting the club would be in a pretty horrendous situation if they had not had his contributi­on to rely on to get them through games in the first half of the season. If Grant staying helps – or would have helped, if the season is drawn to a premature – Town stay in the Championsh­ip, that is worth a lot more than £15m to them, and they would have been confident of another offer that at least matched

A large proportion of our projected revenue for next season was based on transfers

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