Lee Grant facing new pressure at Huddersfield Town – Kevin Nagle won’t let him off | OneFootball

The squad being built by Kevin Nagle and Huddersfield Town is likely to raise the pressure on manager Lee Grant.

Huddersfield Town are heading into the 2025/26 campaign on the back of a summer transfer window in which the Terriers are seemingly building something of a League One ‘super team’.

Following their underwhelming 2024/25 season in which they sank into the middle of the third-tier, following their relegation from the Championship the year before, Town are shaking things up.

They have now announced the signing of Alfie May from Birmingham City, whilst May’s now former Blues teammate Marc Leonard is also supposedly close to 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

Having been a part of Kieran McKenna’s backroom staff at Ipswich Town as the Tractor Boys leaped from League One to the Premier League in back-to-back seasons, Grant’s appointment is certainly an intriguing one.

It could well be that his ceiling is to emulate what McKenna did with Ipswich and that his own impact at Portman Road was so great, or that Huddersfield have given a high-pressure job, expected to challenge for the title, to someone who will need to seriously learn on the spot.

Either way, Grant is being significantly backed this summer, and that is following up a winter transfer window in which the Terriers also did seemingly impressive business on paper with the additions of Ruben Roosken, Dion Charles and Joe Taylor.

If Grant is to go with the fluid and progressive 4-2-3-1 style and shape that served McKenna so well when Grant was at Ipswich, then Huddersfield’s squad is beginning to be moulded into something very impressive.

Last summer saw them spend the window trying to build a squad for Michael Duff’s back-three, then they added firepower in January, and now they are reshaping and restructuring again – but the quality of the personnel is becoming quite daunting for the rest of the division.

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.

Kevin Nagle cannot handle another disastrous season

Huddersfield owner Kevin Nagle simply cannot afford to endure another disastrous season as the custodian of the club, with his tenure thus far seeing big money spent but bizarre decisions made and performances and results on the pitch collapse.

In June 2023, about 13 months after Huddersfield finished third in the Championship, Nagle bought the club as they entered a 12th successive season within the top two flights of English football.

His first season as owner and chairman saw both Neil Warnock and Darren Moore depart the club following their respective spells in charge by the end of January, before Andre Breitenreiter oversaw their relegation from the Championship.

Last season, Huddersfield appeared to be challenging for at least the top two spots as late into the season as mid-January, but a complete collapse in the second-half of the campaign saw them finish in the middle-of-the-table.

Duff, heavily criticised by supporters, was relieved of his duties in mid-March, but, despite promotion still very much a possibility, his replacement for the rest of the season was to be Jon Worthington on an interim basis, almost sacrificing the final ten or so games of the campaign.

Nagle has burned through five different managers and Huddersfield have gone from a team that could reasonably expect to challenge for a top six spot in the second-tier to one drifting towards the bottom-half of the third-tier in just two seasons.

His appointment of Grant is a risky one, and he will therefore, or at least should, be willing to be patient with his decision, but he simply doesn’t have the time to allow Grant to bed in, especially after the investment that is being put into the side in this summer’s market.