Norwich City will always rue £2.5m Everton transfer - Huddersfield Town ended up the ones laughing | OneFootball

Norwich City's £2,5m signing of James Vaughan didn't work out for the Canaries but certainly did for Huddersfield Town

Norwich City’s £2.5m gamble on Everton striker James Vaughan will forever be remembered as a move that simply never paid off – while Huddersfield Town ultimately walked away with the real reward.

Norwich City entered the summer of 2011 with the plan to strengthen their attacking options ahead of a return to Premier League football, having finished second in the Championship and gained automatic promotion.

The £2.5m arrival of James Vaughan from Everton on face value looked like an ambitious yet shrewd piece of business.

Best known in his early days as the man who once held the record as the Premier League’s youngest goalscorer at 16 years and 270 days old, Vaughan arrived in Norfolk carrying plenty of potential and expectation.

What followed, however, was a frustrating spell with Norwich which was overshadowed by injuries that never saw him get off the ground at Carrow Road, while Huddersfield Town went on to reap the rewards Norwich hoped would be theirs.

The Canaries initially thought they had signed an agile and powerful forward capable of offering a different dimension in the final third. Instead, Vaughan’s Norwich chapter was riddled with consistent absences and setbacks, meaning his time with the Canaries quickly became a distant memory with the Carrow Road faithful.

To rub salt into the wounds for those disappointed Norwich fans, his success with the Terriers shortly after gave everyone involved with the Canaries a sense of what could have been for their £2.5m man.

Injuries halted James Vaughan’s progress at Norwich City before it ever truly began

Upon joining Norwich in the summer of 2011, Vaughan was expected to immediately compete for his spot in the Canaries forward line under manager, Paul Lambert.

The attributes he was known for, such as his pace, ability to beat a man, and constant work rate, made him a perfect fit for Norwich's high-pressing, attacking philosophy.

However, it merely took weeks for it to become clear that Vaughan’s biggest battle wasn't, in fact, on the pitch, it was off it, as injuries played a major role in his debut season in Norfolk.

The forward managed to clock up just five appearances in Yellow and Green during his first season, because of a recurring knee injury that prevented him from building rhythm or confidence since departing Merseyside.

Norwich fans only saw glimpses of his potential and why the club paid £2.5m for his services before another setback would incur.

While the club remained determined to get Vaughan back to his best, frustration was starting to build. A £2.5m investment at the time highlighted the fact that Norwich meant business and wanted to cement their place in the top flight, but with Vaughan sidelined for the majority of the 2011/12 season, it made his price tag difficult to justify.

By the following season, Norwich had seen enough and decided that Vaughan's chances of working his way to becoming a regular starter were increasingly unlikely, and therefore decided that the forward needed consistent minutes to find both form and fitness, which the Canaries couldn't provide due to heightened competition for places in the Premier League.

As a result, Vaughan completed a loan move to Huddersfield Town for the 2012/13 season and the striker instantly hit the ground running to many fans' surprise.

Huddersfield Town received the best of James Vaughan as Norwich City watched on in despair

After being freed from the pressures of Premier League expectations, Vaughan became a key figure in the Terriers' attack as he scored 14 goals in 33 appearances, and in the process rediscovered the qualities he once showed as a teenage sensation at Everton.

By 2013, it was clear that Vaughan’s future at Carrow Road was limited as the Canaries geared up for yet another Premier League season.

Norwich therefore opted to part ways with the forward and allowed Huddersfield to sign Vaughan on a permanent deal for around £750k, which proved to be one of the Terriers' best pieces of business in the last 15 years.

Vaughan followed his terrific loan spell the season after by scoring 10 goals in 23 appearances and already had talk of a £6m+ bid from Celtic by December 2013, and another seven in 26 the following year.

He unsurprisingly became a fan favourite in West Yorkshire because of his determined nature to get back to his best and high performance levels when fit.

Vaughan eventually signed for Birmingham City on a short-term loan in November 2015 before seeing it extended for the duration of the 15/16 season, but made the move to St Andrew's permanent at the end of that campaign after leaving Huddersfield at the expiration of his contract.

In hindsight, Norwich’s move for Vaughan can be labelled more as a misfortune rather than a misjudgment, as the striker was bitterly unlucky when it came to injuries whilst at Carrow Road.

When completing the £2.5m signing, the striker possessed many qualities that suited Norwich, as he had youth on his side, as well as the hunger to become a player at the top of his game at Premier League level. But this simply didn't happen when in Norfolk.

Huddersfield, on the other hand, received everything from Vaughan that Norwich had hoped for. A fit, confident and goalscoring Vaughan, was the player Norwich had hoped to have signed, but instead the Terriers were the ones who ended up laughing, as he ended his spell with the club with 33 goals and seven assists in 95 appearances.