What is Town’s true ambition for future?

THE problem with coming out with ambitious statements is that if you don’t achieve them you end up looking very silly and people rightly get annoyed.

If there is credence to the anonymous player claims in The Athletic that Phil Hodgkinson told the playing squad in summer 2019 he had long-term aspirations of Europe for Huddersfield Town, then that is indeed laughable. It would be an achievement for Town to crack the Championship top seven, let alone do it in the Premier League.

The ‘dressing room source’ is quoted as saying: “He’s a good bloke. His intentions are right and he’s got a good heart but saying it and doing it are two different things.

“He stood up in front of us (in the summer of 2019) and said he had aspirations of getting into Europe and how he doesn’t do things by half measures. Ever since then, it’s been the opposite. The squad has needed investment.”

As Hodgkinson would be - and has been - the first to admit, there are things that the 2019 Phil Hodgkinson said and did that the 2021 Phil Hodgkinson would not now say or do.

As he told The Athletic: “I said things I regret. But the important thing is that you learn from these things.

“Everything I said at the time was said with the right intentions, but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I was probably just too positive.

“People may have seen that as a bit of narcissism. That’s not me at all. I’m not like that but I can see how it might have been interpreted. There’s a bit of rebuilding to be done on those fronts.”

The funny thing is that the accusation more recently has actually been much more that they haven’t been ambitious enough. There is a fine line every club needs to walk between being realistic and being ambitious, though, and for Huddersfield Town that issue has been complicated by the constant readjustment of what their level should be.

Going into last season most fans would have been happy to finish about eighth but expected to finish around 14th, they didn’t expect to be plunged straight into a relegation battle.

Coming into this campaign, Terriers fans expected to be in that relegation battle, and staying up was about the limit of their hopes. By Christmas things were looking rosy and some were wondering if Town might have an outside chance of a play-off push. A dreadful run in January and February took us back to that original dismal outlook, and now, after a few good results, we’re back to thinking 14th would be a good finish.

This is what happens when nobody is quite sure what they should be expecting – everything ends up changing from one moment to the next.

There are clubs for whom this is much simpler. What’s good for Norwich, Watford and Bournemouth? Automatic promotion, nothing less. What’s good for Brentford? Being in the promotion picture, preferably pushing for automatic. What’s good for Wycombe? Staying up.

Ask what good looks like for Town, and every writer, observer, pundit and fan will have a different answer.

Their unexpected promotion to the Premier League landed like a planet, pulling all rational expectations out of their regular orbit. It’s only now – and by that we mean in literally the last three weeks – that we feel like things are finally settling back into something like normal gravity and we are getting a sense of where Town fit.

In our view, the reality is that lower mid-table - nowhere near play-off contention but a fair way clear of the relegation fight - is probably about Town’s ‘natural’ place in the order of things, and the starting point from which they should be judged from hereon in.

Many will see that as a reflection of their Premier League legacy having been squandered. Those people would be absolutely correct. But that’s where they are.

There is therefore little room for error if Town are to fulfil their stated ambition of becoming a top 30 English club (i.e. Premier League or Championship top 10) within the next three to five years, particularly when it comes to this summer’s recruitment.

With so many players out of contract, including some of their biggest earners and more than a few fringe players, Town view this summer as an opportunity to continue reshaping their playing squad in line with the vision they share with head coach Carlos Corberan.

They have shown before recruiting smartly is better than recruiting expensively, but of course a tighter budget also means a much smaller margin for error.

That puts the club under huge pressure ahead of next season even if they finish this season well - but what football club goes into any summer thinking they’re not under that pressure?