Huddersfield Town chairman Kevin Nagle joins the We Are Terriers podcast this week to give us his view on how things are going at the club on and off the pitch, including updates on various things behind the scenes.

If you want to skip straight to Nagle (and who could blame you), that chat begins at 26:38 on the podcast, and we’ve also provided a transcript below — but before that, Steven Chicken and David Hartrick discuss the 3-1 win over Bristol Rovers and Tuesday night’s goalless draw at Wrexham.

If you’re not already subscribed to We Are Terriers and want to listen, why not take the opportunity to sign up for a 7-day free trial? Can always bin us off after a week if you fancy, but we reckon you’ll like it — especially as you’ll also get full access to all our written content, including this weekend’s impending game against Exeter.

Kevin Nagle interview in full

Steven Chicken: Kevin, thanks for joining me. There’s plenty going on this season. Give us your thoughts on the season as a whole on the pitch so far, first of all.

Kevin Nagle: I think overall we’re pretty satisfied. We’ve obviously had some ups and downs. We really started off the pre-season great. The early part of the season, the first few games, fine, and then obviously we had that flat spot and then we went down rather quickly. But we’re back and recovering.

We’ll know maybe a little bit more in the next couple of matches but I really feel now like we’ve found our footing because we’ve got some consistency on the pitch.

SC: As you say, it’s been up, down, up again, hasn’t it? Michael Duff started great and he was saying at the beginning, “We’re expecting to have a tough spell here, don’t take winning for granted.” Is that your attitude as well?

KN: I think it was. He had a lot of new players – players that we selected, players as you know that we focused on, that we wanted to bring into the club. But you don’t have them all together working in harmony and it’s nice to see in the first few matches when people are playing well and winning matches. But none of us had the illusion that it was going to be indefinite.

And he was still mixing and matching and trying to figure out who was going to play, but I feel that we’ve really got pretty much a steady ship now. I think we know where we have to go. Obviously, we’ve got some injuries that play into that. But I feel really pretty comfortable. It’s really just, don’t panic.

SC: You did a lot of summer business and the club made clear you had funded that. Was that in recognition of the fact that after last season and some departures, maybe not as many as you thought, that you needed to reinvigorate the squad?

KN: I think there were a couple of considerations, obviously, once we were relegated. Do you play the same type of players in the Championship that you do in League One? Because now, you’ve got some restrictions. You’ve got some financial restrictions that you have to take into consideration.

But also, I think, really look at culture. Culture was really a driving force. We inherited the club. That is what it is at the time, but we wanted to change that culture to a winning culture.

What I really liked when we interviewed Michael, he was really seeing the same things that we were about getting a winning culture and moving that doesn’t happen overnight.

When you’ve had essentially a generation of the same culture, you want to swich that. That’s going to take new players, younger players but also some players with experience, and so I think we’re really optimising that right now. But it’s going to take a little while longer.

SC: The previous manager, Andre Breitenreiter, had spoken about that culture and things in the dressing room needing to change. I presume you took those concerns quite seriously and set about addressing them. Did you agree with what Andre was saying.

KN: I think I agreed with some. I’m not sure I agreed with all. Let’s be candid: I think sometimes managers have to defend themselves if the performance on the pitch isn’t what they want or maybe what they expected.

But all things considered I did feel that we needed to make some changes, and I think that we knew that we were just going to go in a different direction altogether.

As you know, we’re going to build an academy in the future. We hope we’re going to see some players come out of the academy. How many, we don’t know. But that’s going to take some time.

And then also just because there was a change in the political structure through Brexit and the financial considerations that fell out of that, we knew that we also had to move differently as well.

So, we knew we were going to have to invest more in the right type of players, really just create that winning culture more than anything else. And some of that winning culture is sort of subjective, but really we were evaluating players before we’d actually sign them, as to where their mind was, their head, were they team players versus individuals. Plus, you’d look at their history and you do background checks, all those things, in addition to the standard things like what is their technical skill.

And you put all these things together and hopefully you’re going to have somebody that you don’t have those issues with in the locker room that maybe you had in the past.

SC: The sporting director job is a bit of a lightning rod for criticism, people judge on signings. But you did get a lot of players through the door. One or two, you missed out on, through no fault of your own, I think, but are you happy with the business you were able to get done over the summer?

KN: I think I am. Mark [Cartwright, sporting director] unfortunately takes a lot of criticism but Mark has done a really solid job. Like I’ve said before, Mark is only one person in the player selection process because he’s got a group of people that he works with. He works with the manager; he works with me. We sign off on everything and so a lot of those things that I referred to earlier, you know, they’ve got to check those boxes.

Just as an example, are they League One-type players? Have they played in the Championship before? Because we know our next immediate goal is to get back in the Championship. Do they have that capability? What was their performance in the Championship? What was their performance in League One?

Then you start really talking about the culture side. Are they team-oriented? Are they flexible on the pitch? Just a whole cadre of different characteristics that I think people sort of forget. But it’s not one person that makes that decision, and they’re not making that decision based on one particular agency maybe that they work with.

So, I’m still super confident. I feel very good about Mark, he’s very open and I think very objective, and he’s passionate as well. And when you have passion, we know there’s always an opportunity.

SC: Yeah, I think the agency thing has become a bit of a pet conspiracy theory. I’ve looked through the player list and there doesn’t seem to be any particular pattern there.

KN: There’s no substance to that. I spend a little bit of time on X. I come and I go, sometimes more so if I have a little bit more time, and I can read that, and I can see that it’s sometimes heavily stacked.

The one thing I think I’ve learned being in the UK is that most of the sporting directors take criticism. If you’re not winning, they take a lot of the criticism. Sometimes they take as much brunt as the manager.

SC: Obviously Mark came in when the takeover happened but this summer you’ve been busy with recruitment behind the scenes as well. You’ve got a new revenue officer, etc., David [Threlfall-Sykes] has taken the step up to COO. Do you feel like you’re getting that team backstage here in the new offices?

KN: Yes, there’s a lot to do. There is a lot that we had to change. We had to build, really, the infrastructure, and we’re not even really there yet.

Some of these jobs are very specialised. You mentioned the revenue officer, we had to build on the sponsorship side and really on the marketing and branding side, and on the side that has the vision that all the employees buy in. And I think they’re not used to that. It’s not that some of them who were here before didn’t have some of that, but we’ve got a special vision that we want to move.

We want to win a championship one day and my goal, I’ll say this much, is every single person in the room if you walk up to them, they’re going to be able to say, “Our goal is to win a championship and my role in winning that championship is this.”

And we’re not there yet, but we’ll get there.

SC: You’ve got a new addition to the board that’s been announced today, Rupert Campbell is coming on as the non-executive director. Can you tell us a bit about his role? He was formerly at adidas, can you tell us a bit more about his background?

KN: Yeah, really I’d say Rupert is just a great find. Rupert’s got a really storied history and first of all, he’s from Huddersfield and that’s just one of the really great parts, and he’s also a Town fan. So, it was sort of ironic to me and then what I learned is that he lives in Portland, which is basically an hour by plane from where Sacramento is.

So, we had a chance to meet and talk about what he wanted to do. While he was at adidas he had some incredible decisions that he had to make, and it was interesting talking to him.

And he knows a lot about Huddersfield history and, I forgot, his last name is Campbell and of course his nephew is Fraizer Campbell who I think played on the England national team and also Huddersfield and also in the Premier League.

It just made a lot of sense and once I sort of interviewed him and we had a chance to talk, I could see he could be of real value to us. He’s here today, as you can see, and I’m delighted to have him, but he

Episode ID: 1000683943790

GUID: substack:post:150713642

Release Date: 25/10/2024, 16:01:59