Huddersfield Town's perfect transfers, Dean Hoyle takeover and trust in five conclusions 2021/22

Huddersfield Town’s season is finally over after they fell agonisingly short of promotion to the Premier League with their 1-0 defeat to Nottingham Forest in the play-off final on Sunday, offering the opportunity to reflect on what has nonetheless been a brilliant season for Carlos Corberan’s side.

Nobody could have predicted at the start of the season that the Terriers would finish third and go all the way to Wembley, with the side’s performances over the season generating a new-found pride in the club and its players.

There is plenty to talk about over the course of the campaign, and we will talk more about individual players elsewhere. But here are our five main conclusions to draw on the 2021/22 season and where it leaves the club going into the summer trying to prepare to come back stronger next time around.

For Huddersfield Town, the 2020/21 season had been all about gritting their teeth and getting through it. The club knew they were likely set for a difficult campaign, with multiple under-performing players from the Premier League days taking up an undue chunk of the wage bill and leaving precious little wiggle room for Leigh Bromby and his recruitment team.

But that meant that Huddersfield Town had nearly a year to prepare for last summer, and no sooner had the season ended than we got a raft of signings announced to continue the more long-term work they had been able to do the previous January by signing Duane Holmes and Sorba Thomas.

It is difficult now to imagine that we might feel cautiously apprehensive about Lee Nicholls, Matty Pearson, Ollie Turton, Jordan Rhodes, Jon Russell, Levi Colwill and Josh Ruffels, but credit to the scouting department: every single one of those early-summer signings turned out