“Missed opportunity” - Jamie Vardy situation identified as significant Huddersfield Town regret | OneFootball

Huddersfield Town missed out on signing Jamie Vardy when he was a non-league player.

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more...

Huddersfield Town have had a turbulent last decade, with the club going from the highs of the Premier League to the lows of relegation to League One.

The Terriers arguably hit another low point earlier this month with defeat to non-league Tamworth in the FA Cup, but there will be hope that they are heading in the right direction under Michael Duff as they target promotion back to the second tier.

Given their struggles in the past few years, Huddersfield’s recruitment has been scrutinised, and it’s an area they will look to improve moving forward, and missing out on one player in particular in the early 2010's has been noted as a particular sour point.

Huddersfield Town missed out on Jamie Vardy transfer in 2011

Like all clubs, the Yorkshire outfit have done some good and bad deals in the past, and there are also some players that they missed out on.

And, when asked by FLW to name the one big transfer regret that Huddersfield will have, fan pundit Graeme Rayner identified Jamie Vardy as the one that got away, as the club didn’t pursue the future England international - he eventually went to Fleetwood Town from FC Halifax Town for £150,000, but then-manager Lee Clark only wanted to take a punt for five times less than that amount.

However, he also discussed two other high-profile names that would’ve made a big impact had they pulled on the blue-and-white shirt.

“There are a few options for this really, from my knowledge.

“I understand at one point we were in for Alphonso Davies. That sounds ridiculous now, but I believe the Canadian full-back, who is a superb footballer, and is now at Bayern Munich, but I’m certain we nearly signed him, or we were in the running to sign him. So, it’s really interesting that we were at one point linked with players like that.

“The next player is Adama Traore. We were rumoured to be interested in signing him at the start of our second season in the Premier League, but we didn’t get it done and he went to Wolves.

“But, neither of those are the player I’m going to pick. The player I’m going to pick is Jamie Vardy. He was watched by our then manager Lee Clark, several years ago in 2011.

“It was when he was playing for Halifax against his old club, Stocksbridge. Clark and Terry McDermott went to watch him. Apparently, in the game they saw, he set one up and scored two, but Clark didn’t want to spend (more than) £30,000 on him.

“He then went on to Fleetwood and then to Leicester for £1 million, and the rest is history.

“So, yeah, we weren’t prepared to spend (more than) £30,000 on Vardy, and that’s one of those where you just go ‘crikey’, what a missed opportunity that was.

"He has gone on to win the Premier League, play in the Champions League and play for England. He’s also the sort of player that we’ve really lacked over the years, in that not only is he a prolific goalscorer, but he can annoy the opposition, and we’re sometimes too nice in that respect.

“I would’ve loved to see Vardy in a Huddersfield shirt. He’s the type of player that you love when he plays for you, but you hate when he plays against you, but we never got that chance.”

Jamie Vardy worked his way to the top after Huddersfield Town snub

It’s hard to argue against the fact that this was a missed opportunity for Huddersfield, and it would’ve been very interesting to see if Vardy’s career would’ve gone the same way had he joined Huddersfield back then.

To his credit, Vardy battled to reach the highest level, and the fact he is still playing in the Premier League now, at 37, shows he does a lot right as a professional.

It was great to see someone become a Premier League winner and an England international having been in non-league, and it may be a long time before we see it happen again.