Huddersfield Town have perfect example to follow of attacking revolution without defensive loss

There weren’t many Championship teams in 2009/10 who were harder to beat than Swansea City. Only the top two, Newcastle and West Brom, lost fewer than their 11, and only Newcastle conceded fewer than their 37. And yet they finished the season in seventh, a point outside the play-off places, for a simple reason: they were the lowest-scoring side in the division, netting just 40 times in their 46 games.

That summer changed the game for Swansea. They spent just £500,000 on new players, but that fee was spent on a Chelsea youngster by the name of Scott Sinclair. Perhaps even more importantly, Swansea acted decisively in the dugout: Paulo Sousa was out, with the club taking a gamble on an upcoming, attack-minded young manager who had lasted just 23 games at his previous club: Brendan Rodgers.

The effect Rodgers had on the side’s results was profound. A 2-0 defeat away to Hull City on the opening day did not give much indication of what was to come that season, but their first home game did as they ran out 4-0 winners over Preston.

That was only the third time they had won by more than two clear goals since arriving in the Championship from League One two years prior; they would do it another seven times before the season was out, scoring a total of 29 more goals than the previous year while conceding just five more en route to a successful trip to Wembley that saw them promoted to the Premier League.

On the face of it, Huddersfield Town do not appear to be in the same position that Swansea were in the summer of 2010. They finished third last season, not seventh; while their goalscoring record was bettered only by Fulham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest.

But dig deeper into the numbers and the potential is clear. Town were