Chairman’s notes from the Norwich City copy of ‘The Terrier’
- Update from the Chairman ahead of Town’s first league game
- Read Phil Hodgkinson’s first programme notes
- Purchase the Nottingham Forest programme to read his latest notes
It saddens me that I am unable to open these notes with my usual ‘welcome to the John Smith’s Stadium’, but unfortunately - due to the ongoing worldwide pandemic - we are unable to share the opening day of the season with you, our loyal supporters.
To those of you who have lost friends, family and colleagues to this unforgiving virus, please accept the love, best wishes and condolences from myself, my family and everyone at Huddersfield Town.
What this situation has proven unequivocally is that football is absolutely nothing without fans, and I sincerely hope that we will be able to welcome you all back here in the coming weeks and months.
Being a Huddersfield Town supporter has been difficult for the last three years - there is no getting away from that fact - and that’s why the Board and I took the decision that changes needed to be made across the whole of the football club. Sometimes you must go backwards before you can go forwards again, and we are unfortunately still going through that difficult process of building the football club back up, by bringing it right back to basics.
I know that to ask you, our loyal supporters, to be patient whilst we continue to rebuild the Club both on and off the pitch is something you do not want to hear, but ask is all that we can do. We continue to rebuild and put the building blocks in place to take the Club forward, once we have navigated through this difficult period.
Part of that rebuild is the appointment of Carlos Corberán and his team, as I firmly believe that we need an identity and a style of play that our supporters want to watch every week, but one that also makes us competitive and better collectively as a team.
I am excited by what I have seen already on the training pitch, and in the coming weeks this will no doubt be transferred onto the pitch. It takes time to ingrain a completely new style of play, particularly in the shortest pre-season in the Club’s history, but Carlos and his staff will be afforded the time they need to do just that.
We are still five weeks from the end of the Transfer Window as I write this, and it has started very slowly for all clubs. However, there will be additions made to the squad where Carlos and his staff feel we need to strengthen. We will undoubtedly lose some players too, as that is the nature of football. We will also seek to ensure we create pathways for our talented young players, ensuring we do not block their development and progress.
There will be bumps in the road and it will not be smooth sailing throughout this process. Our intended aim is to allow Carlos and his staff time to develop and ingrain this new identity and style of play on the pitch to hopefully provide a much more watchable product, whilst hopefully having a season in which we are not looking over our shoulders. The squad transition will undoubtedly take another 12 months at least, and the work for January and next Summer will start in earnest as soon as the current window closes.
I would like to finish by thanking our incredibly loyal supporters, who at the time of writing have renewed their Season Cards to the tune of over 11,000. In the midst of all of the uncertainty that COVID-19 still provides, this is an unbelievable response and one which helps the Club at a time when income has been zero for a number of months , and looks likely to continue into the near future at least.
Thank you, once again, and best of luck to Carlos and the team against Norwich this afternoon.
Phil Hodgkinson
Chairman
Huddersfield Town
CLICK HERE to purchase The Terrier for the Nottingham Forest game to read his latest notes.
