Will Huddersfield's managerial gamble turn out to be lucrative or costly?

Sacking your manager when you're only just outside the playoff places while leaving the sporting director in situ sounds reckless, but perhaps that's just the nature of football these days.

Another split piece today, with the first part for all being about what’s been going son at Huddersfield Town of late and the second part being abut Herbert Chapman, one of the most interesting people in the history of the game, because this year marks the 100th anniversary of Chapman leaving Huddersfield for Arsenal

Tough crowd. For the Huddersfield Town manager Michael Duff, defeat at relegation-threatened Bristol Rovers–a fourth in their last five games–was enough to ensure that he was out of work just as the denouement for the Terriers’ League One season starts to hone into view.

That’s where the decision to replace him starts to feel a little bit odd. Because Huddersfield themselves aren’t having a particularly bad season. The Bristol Rovers defeat left them two points from the final playoff position. Following relegation from the Championship at the end of last season, this season hasn’t been a complete disaster. Indeed, it could yet still end in promotion back to the second tier. And while recent form has been poor (had they won three of the games they’d lost they’d only be a point shy of the top three), their one win in that five came away to Wrexham, an impressive result by any standards in this division.

The one thing that Huddersfield have been this season has been streaky. Their League season can effectively be sliced into three bands. Their first nine matches resulted in five defeats and the team in 15th place in the table. But then they remained unbeaten for 16 straight league matches, pushing them all the way up to 4th, tucked in just behind Birmingham. Wycombe and Wrexham.

But then since the middle of January they’ve slumped again, with three wins from their last twelve matches and a drop back to 7th place again, and it’s this loss of form which has been blamed as being the reason for his dismissal. "This is not a decision I have taken lightly," club owner and chairman Kevin Nagle told the club website. "I really like Michael as a person and I know how diligently he has worked for the club since he was appointed as head coach in the summer, so we've all been desperate for him to succeed. However, our results on the pitch since the turn of the year have simply not been good enough."

The replacement until the end of this season is Jon Worthington, who made 237 appearances for the club between 2002 and 2009 and was previously the head of their academy. Worthington’s coaching career comes from a slightly unusual starting point. He was a player-physiotherapist at Halifax Town before returning to Huddersfield in 2015 as academy physio. Having spent four years in that position, he was appointed the under-17 coach, and then the under-19 coach. In January 2021, he took on the additional role of B Team coach.

So it’s an unusual path to have taken towards a managerial position. It also feels like a strange gamble to be taking, to be giving the role to somebody whose entire actual managerial experience consists of four games as caretaker at the start of 2024 at this point of a season, with promotion still a definite possibility. Whether Duff ‘deserved’ to be sacked or not is debatable. It is clear that the Huddersfield owners had high ambitions for this season. Club owners often do following relegation.

But it’s not as simple as that in League Two. Two of the top three, Birmingham City and Wrexham, are monied, while there can be little accounting for the achievements of Wycombe Wanderers this season. Huddersfield seem to be in the sort of place you might have expected them to be. Not quite at the level of Birmingham or Wrexham, but still in touch with that chasing pack. Even now, they’re only five points behind 4th-placed Charlton Athletic.

The supporters don’t seem especially disappointed to see him go, and it’s not difficult to see why. Because although Huddersfield have been winning a reasonable amount of games this season, they haven’t exactly been doing so in a very exciting way. With 47 goals from 36 matches, they’re the joint-lowest goalscorers in the entire top eleven.

And that’s manageable while you’re winning, but it doesn’t take much losing for patience in the stands to run out when the football can be, as it has been described a lot on fan forums, “turgid”. On top of that, supporters seldom even get the opportunity to bond with managers or head coaches these days. They just don’t stay in their positions for long enough. There’s less room than ever for sentiment.

It may also be worth asking why all this fuss is being made about the head coach when the club hasn’t taken any action towards removing sporting director Mark Cartwright from his position as well. He’s been at the club since July 2023, so his record now stands at last season’s relegation plus everything that’s happened this season. The team has had a lot of injuries. Okay, well that is bad luck, but it’s also ultimately the responsibility of the sporting director. Recruitment has been muddled. That also lands at his door.

Some supporters fear that while Cartwright remains in position the fortunes of the team will not radically improve. Viewed through this prism, Duff starts to look a little as though he could even have been a fall guy to mask the shortcomings of others. Of course, all of this will be forgotten come May, should Worthington get the team playing and take them back into the Championship. And the new manager has got a couple of weeks to impress his ideas upon his team after taking his debut bow this weekend with a home League match against relegation-threatened Crawley Town. What could possibly go wrong?

Quite a lot, obviously. We live in trigger-happy times when it comes to managerial appointments. It is absolutely clear that short-termism has won the day. But while the football at times could be “turgid”, Huddersfield haven’t been having a bad season. They’re in 7th place in League One. Things haven’t gone completely according to plan, but they’re in the chase for a playoff place, and things could definitely be worse. Will changing the guard at this time of the season make any difference to their fortunes? We shall see. You have to wonder what Herbert Chapman would make of it all.