The “Ich bin ein Terrier” T-shirts, adorned with David Wagner’s smiling face, rapidly sold out of Huddersfield Town’s megastore at the start of this season, testament to the devotion the German manager has inspired at the Yorkshire club since joining as a relative unknown two and a half years ago. The reverence is sure to have deepened after Wednesday’s draw at Stamford Bridge, which enabled Huddersfield to complete the most remarkable survival of the Premier League era.
Wagner suggested at that start of this season that Huddersfield were the biggest outsiders in the history of England’s rebranded top flight and bookmakers agreed, installing them, as soon as they won promotion via last season’s Championship play-offs, as odds-on favourites to finish bottom. It was a logical forecast, as Huddersfield had risen despite finishing with a negative goal difference in the Championship and failing to find the net in the play-off semi-finals or final until shootouts. And Huddersfield’s resources were paltry even by Championship standards so it was easy for anyone not paying attention to their manager’s special rallying power to view their elevation to the Premier League as an aberration that would soon be rectified. Easy and wrong.
Other clubs of comparable means have been exposed as impostors in the Premier League. Swindon excelled to reach the top flight in 1993 but were bundled straight back whence they came, finishing 10 points adrift at the bottom after conceding 100 goals. Blackpool made a better fist of it in 2010-11 and played with endearing brio but ultimately failed to last more than a season, Ian Holloway’s gallant side ending in 19th place. Sean Dyche has exceeded all reasonable expectation at Burnley but Phil Brown’s Hull are the only underdogs of comparable pedigree to this Huddersfield team to have survived. They did so thanks to a whirlwind start to the 2008-09 season, their first in the top flight. But that achievement, laudable though it was, has been surpassed.
Hull collapsed over the line in 2009, surviving with 35 points after running out of steam and winning just one of their last 22 matches. They stayed up but were clearly heading down. They duly sank the following season. Huddersfield have survived by showing qualities that suggest they could endure among the elite for the first time in more than half a century. That is some going given the ground they have had to make up on rivals with far stronger bases and much bigger spending power.
Huddersfield spent nearly £40m bolstering their squad for the Premier League last summer, and added Alex Pritchard for £11m in January, but that outlay amounted to about the same that Manchester City spent on one full-back and less than Everton forked out for Gylfi Sigurdsson. None of their players cost as much as, say, the £18m that Stoke spent on Kevin Wimmer, and their wage bill is the lowest in the league, with no one in Huddersfield’s squad earning even close to the amount that West Brom pay Grzegorz Krychowiak, for instance. But Huddersfield have invested shrewdly and worked in a way that has shown money is not everything.
That started from the top, as the decision by the chairman, Dean Hoyle, to keep season ticket prices low despite joining the aristocracy of the Premier League helped retain a rousing atmosphere at the John Smith Stadium throughout the campaign. Hoyle’s announcement before the start of the season that he would not contemplate sacking Wagner even if Huddersfield fell to the bottom of the Premier League also helped to preserve focus.
Of course, Hoyle made that commitment because he knew he had an outstanding manager. Wagner had demonstrated, after taking over in November 2015 when the club were 18th in the Championship, that he is a leader of rare charisma and intelligence. To gain promotion he forged a method and generated an indomitable spirit that enabled his team to transcend their limitations, and he has done the same this season. The players he brought in last summer had the attributes and character to deepen the squad’s quality without diluting its spirit.
Huddersfield will certainly need to become sharper up front – improving creativity and goalscoring is surely the next stage of their development – but the unity with which they have fought has been uplifting to watch even when flair has been absent. They have made far more tackles (715, with the next most prolific on 657) than any other team in the league.
Summer signings such as the goalkeeper Jonas Lössl, centre-back Mathias “Zanka” Jørgensen and the right-back Florent Hadergjonaj have fitted in well alongside players such as the underrated midfield dynamo Jonathan Hogg and the understated defensive colossus Christopher Schindler. They were tipped to be thrashed every week but, excluding the top five, only one team (Watford) have allowed opponents fewer shots on goal than Huddersfield.
It is a tribute to the can-do culture that Wagner has created, and to his ability to make small tactical adjustments, that every time it looked as if Huddersfield had slipped into a downward spiral like the one that ensnared Hull in 2009, they pulled out a momentous result. They had not won for seven matches before beating Manchester United in October; they had lost five away games in a row before trouncing Watford 4-1 at Vicarage Road in December; they shook off a post‑Christmas slump by gaining back-to-back league wins over Bournemouth and West Brom in February; and they defied prophesies of doom for the run-in by earning draws at Manchester City and Chelsea.
Sunday will be a day of celebration at the John Smith Stadium, of Arsène Wenger’s last match with Arsenal and of Huddersfield’s exceptional achievement. The next big challenge that Huddersfield may have to face is fending off approaches for their manager. Arsenal, for one, could do a lot worse than ask Wagner to uplift them. Not that he is looking to leave a club where he and everyone else seem happy.
The Guardian Sport
