Lee Grant facing new pressure at Huddersfield Town

As the 2025–26 season begins, Huddersfield Town is coming off a summer transfer window in which the Terriers

appear to be assembling a League One “super team.”

Town is making a splash after their disappointing 2024–25 season, in which they dropped to the middle of the third

division after being relegated from the Championship the previous year.

Alfie May from Birmingham City has now been officially signed by them, while Marc Leonard, May’s former Blues

colleague, is rumoured to be nearing a move to West Yorkshire.

That business is only serving to further pile the pressure on rookie boss Lee Grant, who was appointed earlier this

summer, and Huddersfield owner Kevin Nagle is unlikely to be too patient with the former Manchester United

goalkeeper.

Lee Grant needs to hit the ground running as a manager

Grant’s appointment is undoubtedly intriguing, given he was a member of Kieran McKenna’s backroom staff at

Ipswich Town during the Tractor Boys’ back-to-back season jump from League One to the Premier League.

It’s possible that his limit is to imitate McKenna’s success with Ipswich and that he had a significant impact at

Portman Road, or that Huddersfield has given a high-pressure position to someone who will need to pick up skills

quickly in order to compete for the title.

In any case, Grant is receiving a lot of support this summer, which comes after the Terriers made some ostensibly

good additions during the winter transfer window with the acquisition of Ruben Roosken, Dion Charles, and Joe

Taylor.

Grant’s team is starting to take shape into something truly remarkable if he sticks to the fluid and progressive 4-2-3-

1 style and shape that McKenna found so effective when Grant was at Ipswich.

They spent the window trying to assemble a team for Michael Duff’s back three last summer, then they added

firepower in January, and now they are restructuring and reshaping once more. However, the calibre of the

personnel is becoming too much for the rest of the division to handle.

It was already a squad that many were surprised to see relegated from the second-tier, and now it is being built to

dominate League One, perhaps even to a similar degree as to how Birmingham shattered the all-time EFL points

tally last season.

However, that is significantly high pressure on a coach who has yet to ever take charge of a professional football

match in the role, and with an under-pressure and demanding owner, that is only going to increase scrutiny on

Grant.

Since his tenure as the club’s owner has seen significant financial outlays, strange decisions, and a decline in on-field

performances and results, Kevin Nagle simply cannot afford to watch another terrible season as the club’s custodian.

About 13 months after Huddersfield’s third-place Championship finish, Nagle acquired the team in June 2023 as

they began their 12th consecutive season in the top two divisions of English football.