AI predicts when Huddersfield Town will next win a major trophy | OneFootball

This season marks the centenary of Huddersfield Town's last major trophy, so Football League World have asked AI when they will do so again.

The 2025-26 season marks the centenary of Huddersfield Town's last major trophy, so Football League World have asked AI to predict when they may do so again.

Unless you happen to support one of the very biggest clubs, waiting for the biggest trophies to come around can require a degree of patience. When Crystal Palace beat Manchester City to win the FA Cup in May, for example, it was the first major trophy they'd won in their entire history stretching back to 1905 or 1861, depending on who you believe.

Currently sitting outside the play-off places in League One and with new manager Lee Grant already under some early pressure, the likelihood of Huddersfield Town winning one in the foreseeable future would appear slight. But unlike this year's FA Cup winners, were they to do so, it wouldn't be the first time that they did so. It's just that fans who could remember the last time they did so would have to be over 100 years old.

Taking all of this into consideration, Football League World have asked ChatGPT to estimate when the Terriers will win their next major trophy, and the answer that it gave us may surprise fans of all clubs.

Some eyebrows may raise at the possibility of this realistically happening, but upon being asked, ChatGPT predicted that Huddersfield Town will win their next major trophy "in about 5-7 years from now, assuming things go well".

The first task at hand for AI to take onboard was what constitutes a "major trophy" in the first place, and its conclusion was a little broader than most would have predicted, as it included winning the Championship title, as well as the Premier League, the FA Cup or the EFL Cup. Specifically, it pointed out that getting promoted to the Premier League - as they did in 2017 - would be "significant but not always thought of as a trophy".

If winning the second-tier title was to be included as a "major trophy", the club's last one would be the Second Division title that they picked up in 1970. But it is questionable whether most fans - if any - would count this as "major" enough. If we count only becoming the champions of England, winning the FA Cup or the EFL Cup, their last major trophy came in 1926, when they won the First Division title, though it should be added that this was a very special title win indeed.

Huddersfield Town's last major trophy was a long time ago, but it was highly significant

In terms of the complete history of domestic football in England, Huddersfield Town's last major trophy might even count as one of its most significant ever. When the Terriers won the First Division title in 1926, they became the first club to have become the champions of England for three seasons in a row. This was a record that was only even matched by Arsenal, Liverpool and Manchester United until Manchester City set a new one by winning their fourth successive Premier League title in 2024.

The greatest period in Huddersfield's history was masterminded by Herbert Chapman, who arrived at the club having cut his managerial teeth at Northampton Town and Leeds City. At that particular time, the managerial role was not as we'd commonly understand it today. The manager was more of an administrator, leaving the coaching of the players to his staff. At some clubs, the team for each match was selected by the board of directors.

But upon his arrival at their former home at Leeds Road in 1921, Chapman insisted on being given full control over team affairs. He had noticed while still a player almost two decades earlier that teams never seemed to discuss tactics in any way, and that being more tactically sophisticated than their opponents could give his teams a competitive edge.

The results were almost immediate at Huddersfield Town. The Terriers won the 1922 FA Cup, beating Preston North End 1-0 at Stamford Bridge in the last final before it moved to the newly-built Wembley Stadium. In 1924 and 1925 they won the First Division Championship, completing their hat-trick in 1926 even though Chapman decamped to Arsenal in the summer of 1925.

By the time of the outbreak of the Second World War, Huddersfield were diminishing as a force in the game. They reached the FA Cup final in 1928, 1930 and 1938 but lost all three, in 1930 to Chapman's Arsenal, and haven't got past the quarter-finals since. They were runners-up in the First Division in 1927, 1928 and 1934, but they haven't finished third or higher since 1954, and that turned out to be something of a one-off season. They were relegated two years later and only spent two years in the top flight between then and their 2017 promotion to the Premier League.

ChatGPT notes that the Terriers are "currently some distance from being among the top contenders for big national trophies" [its own italics], and that's certainly true. It also describes four things that would need to happen for winning a major trophy to become a realistic prospect: