Huddersfield Town season debrief: Key areas to fix for next season

2025/26 was yet another campaign to forget for the Terriers as they fell three places short of the play-offs. Where did it all go wrong?

Lack of consistency in selection

Lee Grant’s squad rotation policy at the start of the season raised eyebrows. The head coach was keen to limit the strains on a group of players who were, at the time, playing in three competitions.

Grant also reasoned that the greater risk was that if someone sustained an injury — and inevitably someone would — their replacement wouldn’t have enough minutes under their belt to hit the ground running.

It was a fair approach to take. Unfortunately for Grant, an injury crisis came anyway, and it took him some time to find a selection policy and a system that worked.

In the 12 games between the victories over Peterborough on 6 September and Plymouth Argyle on 8 November, Town were without at least eight of their first-team squad. At one point in that run, 12 players were out through a combination of injury, illness, suspension and international duty.

Town lost seven of those 12 games, and dropped points at home to Burton.

It wasn’t just any old players who were ruled out, either.

Jack Whatmough started the season as Town’s first-choice centre-back, but didn’t play another game after September.

Antony Evans was brilliant in the number 8 role in pre-season, but he ended up making just nine appearances in all competitions, most of them from the bench.

Marcus McGuane was signed as another midfield option, carrying a groin niggle. He ended up missing 34 games over the season, and never looked completely fit when he did play.

That left Herbie Kane to start most of Town’s games early in the season. He went down to an injury that ruled him out for 25 games before he was eventually sent out on loan in the January transfer window as Cameron Humphreys arrived.

Mickel Miller had been pegged alongside Ruben Roosken as one of Town’s two left wingers for the season. He missed 25 games over the season, including the bulk of Grant’s time in charge.

Miller’s absence was particularly felt when it became clear Roosken wasn’t comfortable on the wing. In came Will Alves and Zepi Redmond on loan. Both got injured and missed pretty much the entire first half of the season. It was a similar story later on for January’s big deadline day signing Ryan Hardie.

Grant found something that worked, for a spell, switching to a 4-4-2 with Dion Charles and Bojan Radulovic up top. But that soon ran into trouble, and just a month later, Grant settled Town into the 3-5-2 or 3-4-2-1 that they would play for the rest of the season.

These changes in shape, of course, necessitated yet more changes in personnel. Then came the January transfer window; more chopping and changing, especially since Grant was replaced by Liam Manning partway through.

That’s not to lean too heavily on the injuries as an excuse, because Town had assembled a squad deep enough that, in principle, they should have been able to weather almost any level of medical crisis.