‘Sensible’ approach on summer transfers
HUDDERSFIELD Town sporting director Mark Cartwright insists the club will look to take a “very sensible” approach to their summer transfer business.
The Terriers made four additions in the January transfer window, with Bojan Radulovic, Radinio Balker and Rhys Healey signing on permanent deals, while Alex Matos joined on loan from Chelsea.
Town owner Kevin Nagle had spoken of his desire to add a further player towards the end of the window, but acknowledged that some potential recruits were “really pricey”, with the club opting not to make any additional signings.
The Terriers also made four signings last summer, with Chris Maxwell and Ben Wiles joining on permanent deals, while Tom Edwards and Delano Burgzorg were recruited on loan.
Cartwright indicated that Town would look to “invest into the squad” again this summer, but insisted that the club would not be reckless in their spending.
Asked whether the plan was to back Andre Breitenreiter in the summer transfer window at the head coach’s first press conference, Cartwright said: “I think Kevin showed in January that he is more than willing to back the club and back the team, and back the people involved.
“The plan has always been to try and invest into the squad in the summer, but again we’ll do it sensibly.
“We don’t want to be stupid in the market, we want to be very sensible, and again it’s being realistic that we can do X, Y or Z, and that will improve where we are now. It is a case of building and doing it in the correct manner.”
Town also showed diligence when recruiting Breitenreiter to be their
new head coach, with the process taking just under three weeks to complete.
Jon Worthington spent four matches in caretaker charge, with the interim boss overseeing wins against Sheffield Wednesday and Sunderland, and Cartwright suggested that the academy manager’s positive impact allowed the club to be more thorough to ensure they made the right appointment.
“By Jon, Kevin (Russell) and Michael (Tonge) taking over, along with Neil (Bennett), it allowed us the time, it gave us that time to really go into detail,” the sporting director said.“We had a longer process, because we could ask Andre questions, we could get into the minute details, rather than trying to hurry the process up.
“Jon did a fantastic job, and what that did was it bought us the time to spend some real quality moments with Andre, and understand where we could take this.”