Here are some of the highlights from the press conference — you can find the full audio above or in your podcast feed, including Ryan Ledson’s section of the presser.
Martin Drury
How has the summer been?
It’s been busy, really busy, but a lot of good work has gone in, and there have been some parts for us to enjoy, both as players and staff.
It’s been a really busy period, but a productive one as well.
And for you in this role, how have you found it personally?
I’ve not found it too different to what I expected, being honest.
Obviously, there are a few conversations that you’re involved in that you wouldn’t normally be involved in. You’re planning for the club, both short and long term, negotiating with players, speaking to the players, trying to piece the squad together to get it looking how I like it to look, and working with people in the club to ensure that every single decision we make is with the club’s interests at heart.
That’s been everything across the summer. So yeah, I’ve found it good.
With it being busy, does it feel like it has gone quite quickly? The season begins tomorrow. Do you feel ready for the start of the season?
Yeah, I think as a group of players and staff, we’re ready from a mental perspective.
Of course, the window is still open, so there will be one or two things we’re going to try to do before that closes.
But in terms of what we’ve done over the summer and over pre-season, I’ve loved the way the players have gone about everything: how receptive they have been, how hard they have worked, how humble they have been with everything we’ve thrown at them.
You can never really say you’re ready until 5-10 games in, right? But after the work we’ve done, I think we’re as ready as we can be.
On new recruitment, we’ve seen some faces come in — Ethan, Ashley, who I’m sure fans have seen a lot of at other clubs. Can you tell us a little bit more about Ilias Bronkhorst and Derensili Sanches Fernandes and what they’ll bring to the side?
I think last Saturday gave a representation of the attributes they both have.
Sanches Fernandes is someone who can play wide and can play inside. He is a one-v-one specialist. He wants to drive at players. You can see from a technical point of view that he adds real quality to us from that side, and he finds a way to get to goal quickly, individually as well as combining with others.
Ilias is a really nice balance behind that. You saw last week the connection between the two and how they combined to attack down that side. He obviously gives us a physical attribute as well from set plays. He has a long throw, but certainly from a technical point of view, I think they both add some quality that we were looking for.
Because they played together before, you can see that relationship between them. There’s not really too much coaching needed with them in that respect. I thought last week they showed some good things.
And Ibane Bowat as well — what will he bring to the side?
Similar to Ilias, in the sense that he brings some physicality. He is a really good age at 23.
He has come through clubs that are known for working with young talent and developing young talent. I like that he has had the bravery to go abroad and play abroad. He is open-minded to different things.
Speaking with him — and his dad actually came up as well — I was impressed with both of them, the way they spoke about not just football but their mentality towards life, learning and wanting to get better.
Again, he proved last year that he can score some really important goals from a set-play perspective, so he adds some quality to us and adds competition on that side for sure.
Is that outlook on life important to you when it comes to recruitment?
Yes, everything.
We love footballers and we love players, but we want people who want to work. I have to say, I love all my players. I love what they have done over the summer. I love how they have acquitted themselves in everything we’ve done.
Every session we’ve done, double sessions, gym sessions, analysis sessions — not one time have they ever felt like they’re not fully engaged and fully buying into what we’re doing. They’re taking things and going with it themselves, as opposed to the staff driving it. They’re driving it themselves.
So in terms of recruitment, we want people who are going to come into that environment and demonstrate those qualities as a person every day.
Are you close to bringing any more faces in?
I hope so. There are one or two that I would like to do before the transfer window closes.
But again, we have to be diligent in how we do that. It’s not about bringing in numbers. I think we have a really good group as it stands, but if we can add one or two little bits of quality in key positions, that would amount to something, and that would be something we would like to do.
What would those positions be?
I’m not going to speak about that.
Can I ask about Tom Iorpenda’s situation? There have been a lot of rumours linking him with a move away. Is there any truth in that?
I think you’d be naive not to think there would be interest in Tom Iorpenda.
He is a young player who has real qualities and attributes. He is a really good age. He has been at the club for four years now, I think.
He sat down with the club four years ago and they gave him a five-year plan, everything they wanted to do for him, and I think the academy has gone about that in the last four years and delivered every single step they said they would deliver to Tom.
They have provided him with everything they said they would over those four years. His fourth year finished by going on loan and being successful. I thought he did brilliant, and in his fifth year it is hopefully there was hopefully a season that was going to be breakthrough for him.
We’ll continue to work with Tom and his attitude’s been first-class. Hopefully he’s here, but if there’s interest from higher up and it’s something that Tom wants to do, then obviously we know the nature of the window.
Supporters, pundits and so on will have expectations for Huddersfield Town this season. What are Martin Drury’s expectations?
I’ve said it many times: to be better than we were yesterday. That’s it. I don’t look any further than that.
However we trained yesterday, I want us to train better today. However we played last time, I want us to play better tomorrow. That is always the way I look at life as well as football.
I certainly won’t be putting any expectations in terms of our league position at the end of the season. My expectations will be on the day-to-day. Maximising every day as a staff and as a group of players, holding each other accountable, being responsible for what we need to take care of, and doing it with a smile on our face.
They’re the only expectations I have.
Can I ask specifically about Alan Knill, what he’ll bring to the set-up, and why that is such an important appointment for you and the club?
Alan’s career speaks for itself.
I’ve not got a close relationship with Alan, but Alan actually coached me as a young player. He released me when I was 16, which I’d forgotten about. He reminded me. He keeps telling me to just let it go. I’ve done all right!
So I had respect for Alan many, many years ago, and then to watch from afar what he has done throughout his career has been really, really impressive.
The biggest excitement for me was the fact that he has worked with Chris Wilder, who I have a lot of respect for, and I’m aware of the culture and environment Chris wants to create every day. When he has created that, he has ended up taking teams to the Premier League.
The fact Alan has played such a crucial part in that for so many years tells you he has the credentials to do that again, and that is something we want to create here.
Alongside that, I think his wisdom is something you can’t put a price on. Only time spent in the game can give you the things he has got. You can try learning about football until you’re blue in the face, but time spent in the game gives you some of the things he has got.
He has been brilliant since he came in.
At half-time last week, I left the dressing room and he just said one thing to me. I’m not saying what it was, but it was the sort of comment that straight away shifted my thinking about something.
He can just drop little golden nuggets in every now and again, and provide things for myself and the staff that his career has allowed him to do.
Looking ahead to tomorrow, and some of the faces we haven’t seen a lot of in pre-season — Cam Ashia, Bojan [Radulovic], Herbie [Kane], Murray [Wallace]. How are they all getting on? Any timescales for those?
Muzza fractured his hand, so he had surgery to fix that. It is not a long issue. It won’t keep him out for too long. Tomorrow will be too early for him. We’re hoping to have him back in amongst it by next weekend, ideally. If not, it will be the following week.
Bojan has been back on the grass [from a hamstring injury] this week. He has trained with the group. He has probably not yet hit the metrics we need him to hit to be involved in the game tomorrow. By next Saturday, if all goes well this week, he will be available to play some minutes.
Herbie had a setback in his rehab [from a hamstring injury]. He worked really hard to get to the point he was at, came back and had a slight setback. It is not as bad as we first feared. We had that looked at this week and he won’t be too long. He is back on the grass, seeing and running today, doing work today, so they are not too far away.
Cam Ashia is still coming back from the [groin] injury from last season. He came back in pre-season in really good physical condition. I was impressed with him in the pre-season running we did. He did some really good stuff from a physical point of view, but the injury is not quite where it needed to be.
I’ve spoken to Cam at length around different things, and when Cam is ready, physically and mentally, he’ll be with the group and competing for a place.
Joe Taylor had quite a fruitful loan spell in the second half of last season at Wigan. You mentioned when I asked you about Tom that you would be surprised if people weren’t looking at him. Is he part of the plans to be a Huddersfield player past the window?
Yeah, as far as I’m concerned, absolutely.
I had not worked with Joe last year because I came in just after he had left, and the first thing about Joe, as a player and as a person, is that I love working with him. I absolutely love working with him.
He is a bit of a rarity in football because of his background and the experiences he has had. He is great to be around every day. He is working, he is pushing, he is trying to do everything we are asking of him.
Clearly, he has got an eye for goal. Clearly, we know he can score goals. Clearly, we know he has got pace and he is a threat. He offers us something we didn’t have last season.
The time I’ve spent with Joe so far, I’ve really enjoyed. I’ve just had a chat with him before I came away. I’d like to think he has enjoyed it as well, and hopefully we can continue in that vein and get some goals.
In terms of your approach in general, you obviously worked with Carlos, and his great strength here was his ability to take every game and tailor a game plan to every opponent Town came up against. Other managers are a little bit more about sticking to plan A. What sort of approach do you have in mind?
It’s a good question.
I’m similar to Carlos in that I think when you go against different opponents, you have to be able to do different things.
What I would say is the principles of how we play, both with and without the ball, don’t change, irrespective of the opponent.
All it is is that we select certain principles for certain games based on what the opponents do and how we feel we can hurt them.
I think that is something we spoke about last season in terms of having the tools to be able to do that. Last season, we didn’t have any wingers in the group who were fully established wingers. We have brought Sanches in, and he is one who addresses that.
That allows us to have the flexibility for him to play outside or inside. Again, as I’ve always said, knowing what the opponent’s strengths are, being respectful of that, then also knowing the areas where we feel we can hurt them will dictate what we do.
Are you pleased with the work and performances you’ve seen in the friendlies this summer?
In some of them. Some of the games I’ve been disappointed with, but I’m also accepting of what pre-season is there for.
I would rather us get some things wrong in pre-season that we can address and hold each other accountable for, which is exactly what we have done.
We’ve done good things, we’ve praised ourselves and looked at those things. When we haven’t done good things, we have held each other responsible for certain things, then gone back on the training pitch and tried to rectify those things.
So there is a necessity for pre-season. It is not something I am a fan of, but I feel the work the players have done across that has been good.
One of the big positives, even if they didn’t all go in the net, was the number of chances you made across the games. That must have been encouraging. You’d rather see them hit the net, but you’d rather have loads of chances created than nothing created, right?
Yeah, I don’t think we created enough.
Myself and Jon [Stead] — Jon particularly yesterday — probably spent about eight or nine hours looking at every time we arrived in the final third in pre-season and how we can improve the numbers around chance creation and how many goals we can score.
You are right in that some of the players have put themselves in positions to score, which we have seen from our attackers.
Pre-season is the time for us to get some of those finishes wrong, get some of those touches wrong, and put pressure on ourselves to get more in the back of the net. Then when the season comes around, everyone can just settle down. The work is in the bank from pre-season.
We’ve seen the centre-backs spending a bit less time on the ball, knocking it between themselves, and looking forward a bit more. Matty Young is obviously helpful with that with his distribution. But the flip side is that if you are not careful, you can give away cheap goals. Is that always a balance you have to try and strike as a head coach?
Definitely.
I think it is not just as a head coach, but also being respectful of the club you are at and what people want to see and watch.
I want us to have control in games. I don’t think we have had enough control of the ball across pre-season. We have played some really challenging opponents who have stopped us from doing that. We have played a number of Championship sides, and in other games I don’t think we have been clean enough with our possession.
That is something we want to get better at and work on, but not to the detriment of us playing forward.
I think you saw last week that, as much as we didn’t have the ball for as long as I would have liked against a really strong opponent, when we did have it, we felt we were competent with it. We played forwards, ran forwards, and were able to create some good chances as well.
That is definitely the mantra. We want to play forwards and run forwards, but I don’t want to do it in a way where we lack control and the game becomes basketball, because I don’t feel that is the best way for our group of players to demonstrate their qualities.
It is a balance, and that is probably the most challenging balance when you’re attacking: when and how to play forwards, without putting the ball at risk constantly, but also without being passive and having the ball for too long at the back.
On transfers, I want to ask you about the ins, but the squad is looking quite heavy at the moment. There are a lot of numbers in there. Are we expecting some outs over the next few weeks?
Not as a necessity. It is not something we have to do.
As I say, if people come in the building who we feel complement us in a way, then we have good players already in the building who might come knocking on the door and say, “Where does that leave me? I want to be playing more regular football.”
If those conversations take place, then I will have those conversations.
Right now, I feel we have a number where, touch wood, our injuries are OK at the minute. If injuries come in the season, the numbers that look quite high right now might not look as healthy.
That is where we are at. I think we are OK. If any additions are to come to the club and other people want to play more regular football, I will speak to them openly. If that is the case, then of course we will help them find different clubs.
