Huddersfield Town turnaround makes Carlos Corberan brightest young manager in English football

Mikel Arteta, Steven Gerrard and Scott Parker are all spoken of as young managers making their way in the game, but on the day he turns 39 years old, Carlos Corberan is younger than all of them. There are just nine younger managers across the 92 league clubs, in fact; none of them are at clubs above Huddersfield Town’s position as the 23rd best club in the country right now.

There were times last season when that felt like more of a disadvantage than an advantage. Corberan had of course been a head coach abroad as well as having two seasons helping Leeds United win promotion as an assistant, but taking control of your own Championship club that has just narrowly avoided relegation is about as big a challenge as any manager can take on.

Perhaps his biggest misstep was in overestimating his players’ ability to get to grips with the intensive man-to-man marking system that had worked so well at Leeds but which Town’s less capable squad found too much to handle. Nonetheless, they had a good enough start to the season that even a near-calamitous collapse after the new year, instigated primarily by an injury crisis, proved survivable.

With lessons duly learned and a far superior squad to work with, Corberan was able to get to work on version 2 of his vision for Huddersfield Town. Last season’s composition was crude, and duly criticised - heavily. But with appropriate tweaks and flourishes to the outline it helpfully provided the key players, last year has been reduced to pentimento, barely showing through the masterpiece he has put together this season.

That work is not yet done, of course. With six games to go, we are still only hoping they can see their form through to the end and secure a play-off place. Getting there