Huddersfield Town Q&A in full: Club management answer your questions

We Are Terriers' David Hartrick led a panel of key movers and shakers at the club based on your questions

Joining our very own question master David Hartrick were Huddersfield Town head coach Michael Duff, chief executive Jake Edwards, chief revenue officer Paul Reeves, and chief operating officer David Threlfall-Sykes.

Thank you to everyone who sent in questions! The session is available to watch on the club YouTube channel, but we have tapped it up below for our lovely backers who would prefer a written version of the Q&A.

Topics include the club’s work in the transfer market this season, the state of play with taking over the John Smith’s Stadium, season card prices for the new season, how much the club’s plans depend on getting promoted or not, the club’s relationship with Town Women, and plenty more besides.

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David Hartrick: Michael, your time is a bit precious tonight. So we're gonna start with a couple of questions for yourself. Our first question is from Barnaby Dale and I'll be honest with you, I've picked this one because I asked you this question after the game on Saturday and you gave an excellent, extremely eloquent answer to it, so no pressure — but in the last few years, barring a few exceptions, Town’s goal has been to stay in the division. Given the different objectives this year, how have you or how do you intend to instil that winning culture and mindset within the football club?

Michael Duff: “It's a difficult one. Something that we've walked into at the start of the season is the team has just dealt with the relegation. I think it'd been probably two or three years of sort of gradually just getting closer and closer to the edge.

“Then ultimately the club goes down and then it's a whole new reset, but a lot of the reset is with the same group of players. So a lot of the players that were signed were to stay in the league to fight relegation, and the Championship’s a completely different animal. Then all of a sudden it's ‘right, you've got to win every game now’ and now you are one of the biggest clubs in the league.

“That’s tough to deal with from a mentality point of view with the players, and lot of their skill sets are different as well. A lot of the players are ‘bunker in, be hard to beat, dogged, Terrier spirit’, all that sort of thing. And then it's like you said, the expectation from everyone in the football club is, ‘right, we want get promoted’, but you've got the same group, a lot of the same group.

“So we're trying to change that mentality of when there’s adversity - which we've seen — one of the biggest parts of the first half of the season was basically it was all mentality based. We found that when there was a little bit of adversity, people sort of went into self protection mode a little bit — not consciously, it’s probably an inbuilt habit that we tried to get rid of — and we made loads and loads of progress in terms of that. You're trying to get a team that's used to 30% of the board to now 60, 70% of the ball. Different expectations come with that as well.

“So there's lots and lots of different challenges while still trying to win games of football. Ultimately, we all know, I'm no under no illusions, that you have to win games of football at any football club. So they are the main challenges.

“I think the players have been receptive. Um, I think they've, I think supporters would have seen a change in the mentality as the season's gone on. We're in a difficult run at the minute, there's no getting away from that. But I don't think it's a case of we're getting battered, and I don't think it's a case of we've gone under in any games — possibly the first hour at Northampton. But you're going to have moments like that in a season.

“So it's bringing out…a lot of it's day to day habits. That's where the players have been really good in terms of the behaviours, the standards, driving those types of things, and they do play out a lot of the time in the games.

“Now the thing that we’ve found, the next challenge, particularly at home, is teams are giving us a lot of the ball and we need to be better with it and do more with it. So that's just the next challenge. But it's constantly evolving, but the mentality there has been a shift. That's what we're trying to instil every day. Still probably not as eloquent as it was on Saturday!”

David Hartrick: No, very good! We've got a section of questions that kind of boiled down to the same thing — a question from Neil Bowman, a question from Doug Barnett, a question from Liam Grant — and they all really come down to the same thing, which is the recruitment process behind the strikers, because there is a sort of perception that you’ve got a lot that have got the same profile. So can you just talk a little bit about the recruitment process for Taylor and Charles? Why you didn't go for a tall target man to offer something different perhaps?

Michael Duff: “I think you're trying to get the best value for what's out there and the best players that are out there. You can go and sign basketball players if you want to because they'll be tall. It's not a case of we've specifically gone and signed two 5’9” centre-forwards.

“I think anyone in my business, everyone wants Didier Drogba. Everyone wants someone who's 6’4” who can hold it up, who can run in behind, who can link play and can score goals, but there's not many of them around.

“With the players that were here as well, you had Bojan here who was six foot four. You got Freddie, who's a bigger profile. Rhys Healey isn't the biggest, but plays a lot bigger than what he is. So we had that physicality there anyway. Dion plays bigger than what he is.

“We're in League One, and a lot of the players are in League One for a reason that they can't do all the things that Didier Drogba did, so normally they've got some sort of deficiency. So then it's finding out. So we could go and sign a 6’6” centre-forward, but there wasn't any out there for a start that we felt that could maybe run or press or hold the ball up well enough. So these are all the things that as you go through the list, it's a tick, it's a tick, it's a tick, it's a tick. And there's more ticks than not.