Founded in 1908 Huddersfield Town AFC locally known as ‘The Town’ or ‘The Terriers’ enjoyed their best spell of success during the 1920’s when they were the first team to win the English top flight 3 times in a row and won the FA cup in 1922.

In the late 1950s, the club was managed by Bill Shankly and featured Denis Law and Ray Wilson, before being relegated from the top division in 1972. The Terriers then spent 45 years in the next three tiers of the football league before against all the odds being promoted back to the English Premier League in 2017 under the management of David Wagner who instantly became a club legend with that achievement.

In their first season back in the Premier League they again surprised everyone with their #TerrierSpirit & managed to stave off relegation despite one of the lowest wage budgets in the division.

The Future

The club, unsure as to how to drive forward & develop itself into a top 4 club in the Premier League, has now decided on a major shift in direction. As part of its 5-year plan, the club has announced and is delighted to say that a new Director of Football & management team will be joining the club to help them achieve their goals. Guido Merry has been a significant coup and will bring a certain experience and knowledge with him. He will work very closely with the new manager appointed to bring the future success of the club.

His first action is to bring in an unknown promising manager Sdlonner Kram and throw him into the deep end of Premier League football management where he will attempt to bring his international and playing experience in Germany & the Bundesliga across to the Yorkshire club.

The aim over the five years is to keep HTAFC moving up the premier league & develop young players through the academy to push into the first team. They will be then sold at a profit to reinvest to allow the club to aim to break into the top 4 & stay there.

As the manager, Kram will undertake the modern version of the football manager setting the direction of the clubs’ tactics and motivating the team through coaching and training to achieve results. All player purchases, loans & sales will be undertaken by the DOF & HOYD working together to bring in the right players. Kram will request certain positions be filled as he sees fit but ultimately will leave all negotiations to them.

Everyone will work with the owner to improve the standard of the facilities of the club to attract the top coaches & staff establishing HTAFC as a club of choice for all European talent. Part of that vision will be to develop a thorough scouting network & bring in local, national & European youngsters & give them game time to allow them to reach their full potentials.

Sdlonner Kram’s tactics

I will share my tactics as I go, starting with a specially formulated TerrierTiki style 4-1-4-1 being uploaded with the next instalment. I will be aiming to perfect corner routines, as it is a crucial part of the modern game and seeing if I can get free kicks and throw in routines to work as well.

Initially, I will be starting with my favoured set up as below, not quite Strikerless (sorry Guido) but I am going to try a second system with the famous Guido ‘Withdrawn Targetman’ especially when up against defensive teams to pull the central defenders out of position.

As you can see, I favour a high-intensity pressing, and possession-based game, based on my love of the beautiful football that we are witnessing currently from many European coaches. Trying to get this to work in FM is not always easy with one of the weaker teams in the division, but I’m looking forward to exploring the new interface & set up & tweaking as I go to beat the opposition teams & break into the top 4 & Champions League qualification.

Sdlonner Kram’s training

As I mentioned I will be looking to personally manage the development of all the players at the club as part of my role through their individual training plans. I usually update these plans quarterly based on their development & needs for their roles within the team / squad.

Players will be assessed bi-annually whether they are going to progress within the squad or whether they need to be loaned out or sold on. Hopefully, the DOF will not sell them on for silly values or too soon (hope you’re listening, Guido).

I will share my training findings as I go through the seasons / save.

So that’s it for part one of #TerrierSpirit. I hope you’ve enjoyed the read so far and I look forward to dropping some tactics downloads with you shortly, as well as the preseason results & the transfer activity reports from Guido.