Dean Hoyle Archives - Page 2 of 2

After just 11 months in charge Simon Grayson has become the latest manager to be shown the exit door at Huddersfield Town. Despite engineering Town’s return to the second tier of English football for the first time in 11 years and an initially encouraging start to life in the Championship, recent performances have meant that the decision to sack Grayson has come as little surprise to many.

In fairness to Grayson, he was exactly what Huddersfield needed to get over the finishing line in the race for promotion last season. Grayson’s coolness in the successful play-off campaign represented a marked contrast to predecessor Lee Clark. In the 2010-11 play-offs Clark let the emotions and the occasion get the better of him. After the semi-final victory against Bournemouth it almost felt like Town had already been promoted and this was mirrored by Clark’s jubilant celebrations during the post-match lap of honour. As a result there was a huge sense of expectation at Old Trafford among Town fans and it almost felt as if Town only had to turn up in order to get promoted. Under Clark, Town would be partially undone in the play-off final because they ‘played the occasion’ rather than the game itself. Grayson on the other hand was much calmer after the two-legged victory over MK Dons and the subsequent celebrations were much more restrained. Grayson gave the impression that there was still a job to be done and his calmness under pressure allowed Town to stay more focussed on the job at hand against Sheffield United in the final, and there was a greater air of realism among Town fans at Wembley than had existed 12 months previously at Old Trafford.

The play-off final victory was followed up by an encouraging start to life in the Championship with Town climbing as high as second in September. Grayson had Town playing genuinely good football, performances away against Sheffield Wednesday and Blackpool particularly stood out, and there was a general consensus that Grayson’s Town team were playing the best football since the Steve Bruce team of the turn of the century. With this in mind it might seem strange that, within four months of all this Grayson now finds himself out of a job, so where did it all go wrong for Simon Grayson?

Though Town were never realistically going to be able to maintain this form throughout the season, Town’s performances have tailed off alarmingly since mid-November and the buck must ultimately stop with Grayson. Increasingly erratic team selections gave Town an unbalanced and unsettled look. As a result the attractive football evident in the early days of the season gave way to aimless long ball football which isolated Town’s most creative players, particularly Oliver Norwood who had been instrumental in Town’s positive start to the season. Perhaps the most bizarre of Grayson’s team selections – or non-selection – was his reluctance to play Scottish international left-back Paul Dixon. Despite performing well for Scotland, Dixon’s form did admittedly start to fade for Town. However, the way Grayson dealt with the situation was poor. Dixon was dropped from the team altogether for a number of weeks and instead Grayson chose to play young centre-back Murray Wallace at left-back. Decisions like this became more and more frequent as Grayson struggled to arrest the slump in form and only served to strain the increasingly fragile confidence.

By Grayson’s own admission, he had never been in a position where he’d had to manage a team on a long winless run before. This was particularly evident in recent weeks and with Grayson at the helm there were real concerns about where the next win was going to come from. The team were low on confidence but more alarmingly the players did not seem, at times, to be putting in the requisite effort or commitment. There have been claims that Grayson had lost the ‘dressing room’ and this would explain why performances have deteriorated so rapidly and so drastically. Instances like the Paul Dixon one outlined above suggest that everything behind the scenes were not completely as they should be. Grayson’s departure from Leeds came amid similar allegations and though it is just speculation that behind the scenes problems were impacting on performances, it does seem hard to deny that Grayson’s questionable man-management and team selections led to the team losing its confidence and consequently the poor run of results.

At this stage it is worth pointing out that I think Simon Grayson has been good for Huddersfield. The calmness and honesty he displayed, especially in post-match interviews, were a breath of fresh air in comparison to his predecessor. Furthermore, when he was appointed his remit was to get Town promoted from League One and established in the Championship. Though Grayson achieved the first part of this by gaining promotion, recent performances have brought Town’s Championship status into jeopardy. In a way Grayson has been the victim of his own success. The performances at the start of this season raised expectation levels and this served to further emphasize the poor performances that have become all too common since November as Town fans know that the team is capable of much better than has been seen recently. I do believe that Grayson has been, to an extent, let down by his players. As they proved earlier in the season, they are more than capable in terms of ability, but in recent weeks both performances and effort levels have been lacking.

A run of 12 games without a win in the league and the nature of the performances that accompanied them, meant that, even though Town were still 7 points above the relegation places when Grayson was sacked, Dean Hoyle had little choice but to sack Grayson. Grayson should be praised for his success, after all Grayson is one of only 9 managers in the clubs entire history to actually win something, and I am genuinely disappointed that things haven’t worked out for him recently. However, with no sign of form improving the decision to make a change had to be made before Town slipped even further into trouble. The early season panache has disappeared and performances against Leicester (6-1 defeat) and Watford (4-0 defeat) were quite frankly unacceptable and it is the nature of these defeats that really set the alarm bells ringing. Town also struggled in home matches against Sheffield Wednesday and Blackpool, who they had beaten so comfortably at the beginning of the season, and it was evident that something had to give. It was impossible to say where the next victory was going to come from and after having to fight so hard to get back to this level Dean Hoyle simply could not afford to let the current slump continue and risk an immediate return to League One – especially given the clubs recent financial figures.

It is obviously not a given that Town’s form will dramatically improve when a new manager is appointed, but history shows us that new managers often do provide struggling teams with fresh impetus. With regards to the next manager, Nigel Adkins is a name currently doing the rounds and would be a great appointment, however it remains to be seen if he would be prepared to go from managing a Premier League team to a side struggling at the wrong end of the Championship. What is crucially important is that Town look for a long-term replacement. Whoever Town end up appointing, they must choose someone who will help push them on to the next level and buy into Dean Hoyle’s vision for the club, rather than just a temporary stopgap who will help Town avoid relegation, if not the club will find itself in the exact same position in 12 months time.

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The 30^th April 1994. Huddersfield Town have just played their final game at the decrepit Leeds Road stadium. It is not, however, all doom and gloom for the Yorkshire club. Just over the road is the undeniably impressive 25,000 all-seater McAlpine Stadium. Surely this is the start of a glorious chapter in the club’s history? Wrong. Financial mismanagement, a brush with liquidation, boardroom politics and one man’s ego have jeopardized the club’s very existence and turned the stadium into a white (and blue) elephant.

The stadium was initially set up in a 3-way structure between the football club, Kirklees Council and the rugby league team Huddersfield Giants. The shares were split 40:40:20 with the football club and the council having the greater share of this so-called ‘community stadium’. The stadium had been largely funded by the sale of the old Leeds Road ground, and the council, as reflected in this setup. The stadium was initially fairly successful. Town were promoted in their first full season at the new location and in the summer of 1995 American band R.E.M. visited, performing in front of 70,000 people. Despite this, the fortunes of the football club, and the stadium, were to take a nosedive – starting in 2001.

Local businessman Barry Rubery was just one of a number of modern day entrepreneurs attracted by the lure of trying to take a football club to the ‘Big Time’. As is so often the case, the football club spent way beyond its means attempting to get to the promised land of the Premier League. Town were relegated to the 3^rd division in 2001, which only exacerbated the financial problems at the club. Despite the admirable attempts of Lou Macari – and the dreadful efforts of Mick ‘Total Football’ Wadsworth – the club slipped through the relegation trapdoor and into the 4^th tier of English football in 2003. At this point Town had debts of up to £17 million. Town plunged into administration and for a time there was a genuine possibility that this proud football club would go out of business. The club would eventually be ‘saved’ by Huddersfield Giants chairman Ken Davy to the relief of Town fans everywhere.

What does this have to do with the stadium? Upon his purchase of the club, Ken Davy transferred Town’s 40% share of the stadium into his own private company ‘Huddersfield Sporting Pride’. Surely he must have paid a hefty amount to get a 40% stake in a modern, 54-acre stadium? Well not exactly – the colossal sum of £2 to be precise. Even the most frugal of Yorkshiremen would see this as a great piece of business for Davy. This company also possessed the shares of Davy’s other team, the Huddersfield Giants, meaning this stadium, supposedly created for the benefit of the community, was now 60% owned by a private organisation. Davy has argued that he did this to protect the club from future liabilities, yet as the club emerged from the troubled backdrop of administration and financial turbulence, the shares have remained privately owned.

Dean Hoyle, the current Town chairman, agreed a deal with Davy to buy the shares back shortly before Christmas 2009. If messageboard talk is to be believed then the deal was rumoured to net Davy £3 million pounds, making him a 150,000% profit on his initial purchase price of £2. Had this deal gone through, I believe Davy would have retained at least some respect among Town fans. At the end of the day Davy is a businessman with no prior attachment to the club. Had he returned the shares at this premium price there would, in my opinion, have been an understanding that Davy had supported the club at a time of great difficulty, made his money back and prevented the community from losing its major sport team. The deal, however, fell through. The council held up the deal before deadline after deadline passed with no progress. Allegedly the reason for the collapse was Davy and his insistence on changing the agreement to further benefit him. Despite netting a cool £3 million from the share transfer, he pushed for further changes including the changing of the so-called ‘set in stone’ rental formula which would lead to the football club paying an even higher proportion of rent on the stadium to the Giants. Whether this is more than messageboard gossip remains to be seen, but Hoyle has promised Town fans that the truth behind the collapse will eventually come out.

It is amidst this backdrop that Town fans have begun a series of protests against the collapse of the deal, ranging from boycotts of the catering outlets to the donning of t-shirts in front of the Sky cameras. Huddersfield Town, and its fans, are the major providers of income to the stadium. Yet they are arguably little more than guests in a stadium that is their rightful home. Without question the stadium needs the full backing of the council, the football club and the rugby club to work effectively. As it stands Ken Davy and his private company hold far too much influence for the property to be an effective community stadium. The halcyon days of R.E.M., Bryan Adams and, (*ahem*) Blue seem a distant memory. The shares issue continues to cast a grim shadow over the football club and the community. What the final outcome of the stadium ownership will be remains to be seen. This trailblazer of a modern stadium, which inspired the Emirates, Wembley and erm, the Reebok, will continue to be a burden, rather than a source of pride, to the community and the football club until this saga comes to its eventual conclusion.

Spoughts

Tag Archives: Dean Hoyle

Why Huddersfield Town Had to Sack Simon Grayson

Ken Davy and the Galpharm Stadium