Liam Manning told to take brutal Huddersfield Town action - 'a whole lot needs to change' | OneFootball

Huddersfield Town haven't set League One alight, and FLW's Terriers fan pundit feels that they need to make a lot of changes to personnel this summer.

Huddersfield Town have had a stop-start season in League One, and FLW's Terriers fan pundit feels that his club need to make sweeping changes to personnel this summer.

With a goalless draw away to bottom club Port Vale meaning another two points dropped in their chase for a return to the Championship, the feeling remains that the 2025-26 season may be looked back upon by all at Huddersfield Town as something of a wasted opportunity.

The Terriers remain in sixth place in the League One table, but with six teams bunched together around them with just four points separating them, it remains very much in the air whether Huddersfield will be one of the four clubs taking part in the play-offs come the end of the season.

Huddersfield started the season with rookie manager Lee Grant in charge, but he was replaced by Liam Manning in January. Attention, therefore, is starting to turn to what changes in playing personnel the club may need to make in the summer.

"The squad needs a major overhaul" - Huddersfield urged to make widespread changes in the summer

With the end of the season now fast approaching, FLW have spoken to our resident Huddersfield fan pundit Graeme Rayner about the changes that he'd want to see at The Accu Stadium this summer, and Graeme believes that the changes need to be widespread: "Promotion this year is looking increasingly unlikely, or challenging is going to be a difficult ask. I think whichever division we're in next season, the squad needs a major overhaul. We have too many players who have not lived up to expectations."

Graeme feels that regardless of the division in which Huddersfield are to start next season, wholesale changes are necessary at his club: "I wouldn't want to single out Dion Charles because he's not the only one who hasn't delivered, but by reckoning if we were to stay in League One, which is looking like the most likely outcome, we could easily see 15 or 16 players being moved on, certainly more than ten."

It's a combination of players who have not looked ready for the task ahead of Huddersfield Town this season and players who are approaching the end of their contracts with the club who he considers the most likely to leave: "There are too many who are just not looking up to it, and there are a few out of contract, who I would argue wouldn't merit the investment of another contract. We've got four goalkeepers at the club, and one of them is on a short-term contract until the end of the season. He probably needs to go."

But Graeme also believes that the defence could do with a shake-up as well: "We've got several full-backs at the club, but only really Gooch or Mumba are ones I would keep, long-term. Centre-backs, again, we could probably do with an extra body there, and moving on someone like Joe Lowe or Murray Wallace because of age, though Wallace has been one of our better performers."

And he also feels that both the midfield and attack also need changes, regardless of whether Huddersfield are a Championship club or a League One club by the summer: "Midfield is definitely the area that most needs an overhaul. Arguably, none of our current midfield would warrant a starting place if we were to get promoted, and really there isn't an area in midfield where we've got the quality that we need consistently enough to warrant any of them being starters. Up front, who'd have thought that Bohan Radulovic would be our best asset, but he is."

Our Huddersfield pundit believes that his club will be spoiled for choice in terms of the players that they want to leave the club, come the end of this season: "There's a lot of players for my money that could move on. Potentially, Lee Nicholls' time is coming to an end, even though he's got a longish contract. I'm never sure how happy he is at the club. We've got a lot of players on loan. Ruben Roosken and Herbie Kane probably haven't got a future here, and there have been grumblings about Alfie May for a while, even though he hasn't been here very long."

Graeme's conclusion is that a lot of change will be coming to his club in the summer: "There's a whole lot of things that need to change, and maybe what's needed at the club is a clear out and a fresh start."

Huddersfield haven't had a bad season, but they've failed to live up to summer expectations

While there has been clear unhappiness around The Accu Stadium at the club's lack of progress over Huddersfield Town's 2025-26 season, the Terriers haven't had a terrible campaign. They haven't been below 10th place in the table all season, and for most of it - including right now - they've occupied a play-off place.

But expectations around the club were high at the start of the season under new manager Lee Grant, and they clearly haven't been met. Grant was replaced in January by Liam Manning, who had a disastrous first half of the season himself at Norwich City, but results haven't improved enormously. Following an encouraging start under Manning, results have started to tail off again, hinting that consistency has been the squad's biggest issue throughout the 2025-26 season.

The case of Alfie May is one of pre-season expectations not having been lived up to. May cost the Terriers a reported £1.3 million from Birmingham City last summer, but May has only returned five league goals from 28 League appearances for his new club, some way short of the return that Huddersfield would have expected for that sort of outlay.

Wholesale changes to a football club's personnel are never straightforward. There are players falling out of contract in the summer, but there are also others who have further years to run on theirs, and preparing for this is difficult until it's known what division a team will be playing in. That seems likely to remain a mystery at Huddersfield Town until the very end of this season.