Why Birmingham City & Bolton Wanderers may share transfer laughter at Huddersfield Town | OneFootball

Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers both did excellent business to sell Alfie May and Dion Charles to Huddersfield Town.

It has been a really tough time of it this season for Huddersfield Town, who were one of the pre-season title favourites in League One after a very busy summer transfer window, but the Terriers instead find themselves four points outside of the top six and the play-off places after 20 matches.

The pressure is certainly growing on Huddersfield boss Lee Grant, and the situation won’t be helped by two of their major signings from 2025, Alfie May and Dion Charles, both having majorly underwhelmed, leaving Birmingham City and Bolton Wanderers looking at their performances feeling quite satisfied with the sanctioning of their respective sales.

Huddersfield supporters once again showed their displeasure with Grant and the side after a 1-1 draw with fellow mid-table Wigan Athletic at the John Smith’s Stadium on Saturday afternoon, meaning Town are now winless in their last five matches in League One.

Huddersfield were one of the bigger stories in the summer with owner and chairman Kevin Nagle in charge of what was a fairly major overhaul of the squad and big backing given to Grant, who is in his first managerial role.

After a dismal end to last season, which involved the sacking of Michael Duff in mid-March as Town, once pushing for the title mid-way through the campaign, succumbed to a humbling mid-table finish, things appeared only certain to go one way, upwards, this time around.

Instead, as they head towards the festive period and then the January transfer window, there will now be fairly major concerns that they are again set to stumble into a season to forget – and two of their bigger name additions in the last 12 months aren’t helping their cause.

Lee Grant is failing to get the best out of Alfie May

Having been a key part of the Birmingham side that romped to the League One title with a record-breaking 111 points last season, the Blues deemed a £1.2 million offer enough to part with former Cheltenham Town striker Alfie May.

May had been something of a non-league journeyman before an underwhelming stint at Doncaster Rovers saw him move on to Cheltenham mid-way through the 2019/20 campaign.

After a slow start in Gloucestershire, he then scored 23 and 20 goals in back-to-back seasons for the Robins before another 23-goal League One campaign for Charlton Athletic a couple of seasons ago.

At St Andrew’s, in a star-studded squad for the third-tier and certainly second fiddle in attack to Birmingham’s club-record signing Jay Stansfield, May again hit good numbers with 16 strikes in 44 League One appearances, despite often playing in the so-called ‘number ten’ position, rather than as an out-and-out centre-forward.

That position is where he has played most of his football this term, too, with Grant even going so far as to dismiss suggestions that he should be playing up-front in his rigid 4-2-3-1 system that he has stuck to throughout the campaign.

He has occasionally played as the out-and-out striker, as was the case for 77 minutes of Huddersfield’s 1-1 draw with Wigan, but often as a second striker, or even out-wide in a constantly changing attack, May has struggled for any sort of consistency.

He did notch twice in his opening five appearances for the Terriers, one being a penalty, but has since managed to add just one more to his tally, a late equaliser as a substitute in a recent 3-3 draw at AFC Wimbledon.

To have shelled out so much money for May and not yet have identified his best position in this side can only be seen as poor and wasteful management thus far this season, and Birmingham will be very content to have pocketed a profit on the 32-year-old attacker.

Bolton were left frustrated but will now be content with Dion Charles sale

Similarly to Huddersfield, Bolton also ended up as forgettable also-rans in League One last season, and a lot of that could be levelled at poor business in the January transfer window.

Already short up-front, Bolton, then managed by Ian Evatt, sanctioned the reported £750,000 sale of Dion Charles to Huddersfield, amid a crisis that eventually saw Evatt depart the club less than two weeks later.

Charles’ form had dipped for some time at Bolton, but many had put that down to the overall management of the side by Evatt, with his supposed replacement, Kion Etete on loan from Cardiff City, failing to make any sort of impact following the appointment of Steven Schumacher.

However, with Bolton now appearing transformed this season, they will be more than content with the money they received for the Northern Ireland international, who had some special moments as a Bolton player and had been the first man to score 20 in a season for the Whites since Michael Ricketts, and the first since club legend John McGinlay to do it in back-to-back campaigns.

His time at Huddersfield has been a sorry one, with the 30-year-old having scored just four goals in 36 appearances since his move last January. All four of those goals coming in a three-game spell in November, with one against Plymouth Argyle and another against Mansfield Town in League One after a brace against the latter in the EFL Trophy.

After that surge, and a hopeful return to form, he has now gone goalless in five successive league starts, with Grant surely again considering his options up-front.