Huddersfield Town have done something only the likes of Man Utd, Man City and Liverpool have done | OneFootball

2025-26 marks the centenary of Huddersfield Town achieving something that only the game's elite have been able to match it; a treble of league titles.

The 2025-26 season marks the centenary of an achievement which remains one of the most difficult to manage in the English game. It's so rare that only elite clubs have ever managed it - a domestic treble of league titles.

Huddersfield Town aren't considered one of the giants of the modern game, but for a few brief years in the early 1920s, they were the team to beat. And the achievement that they managed in 1926 remains one of the most difficult to match in the game in this country. That year, the Terriers became the first club to win three back-to-back league titles, something that's only been managed by four different clubs - Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester United and Manchester City - since.

Huddersfield were formed in 1908, and were elected into the Football League two years later. But their early years were far from easy. The club embarked on an expensive redevelopment of their Leeds Road home upon this, but there were problems with the pitch and crowds didn't rise to the extent that had been hoped for. In 1912, the club financially collapsed and almost ceased to exist altogether.

When League football returned after the First World War, Huddersfield found themselves revitalised, and they won promotion into the First Division at the first attempt as runners-up behind champions Tottenham Hotspur, also reaching the FA Cup final for the first time before losing to Aston Villa at Stamford Bridge. The 1920-21 season proved to be a struggle, and the Terriers finished 17th in the table, but during this season they would change their manager, a decision that would change the history of the club.

Herbert Chapman was a revolutionary before he arrived at Huddersfield

Starting out in amateur leagues in Lancashire, Herbert Chapman cut an uninspiring figure as a player. He played briefly in the Football League for Grimsby Town, Sheffield United and Notts County, but remained an amateur for much of his playing career in order to make the most of his civil engineering qualifications. He also played two years for Tottenham Hotspur before moving to Northampton Town of the Southern League as player-manager in 1907.

Northampton had finished bottom of the Southern League table for each of the previous two seasons. But by the time that Chapman retired as a player in January 1909, he'd already made his mark as a manager. He'd noted as a player that no teams ever seemed to make any serious attempt to, as he put it himself, "organise victory", and that even the players seldom talked to each other about how they might win matches.

He drew up a framework around which the players could work. He dropped a couple of his forwards back and instructed his players on how to play their way out of trouble should they find themselves in any. After successfully lobbying Northampton's directors to let him spend a little money on players, they won the Southern League in 1909.

Chapman left Northampton for Leeds City in 1912, but here his career would run into problems. When football restarted after the war, Leeds were in a pretty sorry shape, which was made all the worse when the club obstructed an attempt to investigate allegations of illegal payments to players and were expelled from the Football League in September 1919 as a result. Chapman received a lifetime ban from the game for his troubles, a ban which he initially didn't even bother trying to get overturned, and only did so when the Huddersfield job was offered to him two years later at the start of 1922.

Huddersfield Town came to life under Herbert Chapman's management

Chapman's first full season at Huddersfield ended with the club winning the FA Cup for the first time, with a 1-0 win against Preston North End at Stamford Bridge. By this time, Chapman had been granted complete control over the footballing side of the club, and everything would be done according to his rules. The club's reserve teams and youth teams would play the same formation as the first team, whilst a wide-ranging scouting network would look for the best players for his tactical system.

Money from the FA Cup run paid for better players. The following year, Huddersfield jumped from 14th place to third in the table. The year after that, 1923-24, they became the champions of England for the first time, winning the League title by one of the tightest margins ever seen. Tied on points with Cardiff City, they lifted the title on goal average - goals scored divided by goals conceded, which was used to differentiate teams finishing on equal points until it was replaced by goal difference in 1976 - by the thinnest possible margin, 1.818 to 1.794. The year after that, they repeated the trick, but by a slightly wider margin, beating West Bromwich Albion to the title by two points.

The summer of 1925 brought two changes that change the game in this country. Firstly, the offside law was changed was changed so that the number of defenders that needed to be between an attacker and the goal for an attacker to be offside reduced from three to two. And secondly, Chapman left Huddersfield for Arsenal. A healthy pay rise and the opportunity to work in London proved to be the deciding factors.

The 1925-26 season was certainly different. The number of goals scored over the course of the season increased from 1,192 to 1,703 as a result of the offside law change. Manchester City were relegated despite having scored 89 goals. But one thing didn't change. No team had become the champions of England three times in a row before, but under new manager Cecil Potter, Huddersfield managed it, five points clear of Chapman's Arsenal.

Huddersfield wouldn't win another League title until they lifted the Second Division title in 1970, but they wouldn't immediately fade from view. Huddersfield were runners-up in 1927 and 1928, behind Newcastle United and Everton respectively. They wouldn't be relegated from the top-flight until 1952, though they've only spent seven seasons there since.

And Chapman would go on to more great things. He'd win both the League and FA Cup as the manager of Arsenal, and the Gunners would go on to become the next club to win three straight League titles in 1933, 1934 and 1935. But Chapman wouldn't be there to see it. He died from pneumonia in January 1934. His influence at Arsenal would be even greater than it had been in West Yorkshire. He introduced their white sleeves, so that the players could see each other better. He was one of the earliest adopters of the "WM" formation, which came about as a result of the 1925 offside law change, and would become a standard formation for decades.

But Huddersfield were the first club to be the English champions three times in a row, and just what an achievement that was can be seen in how few times it's been done in the century since they completed theirs. Since then, Liverpool completed one in 1984, Manchester United did so in 2001 and 2009, and Manchester City in 2023. The year after City completed theirs, they broke the record by winning a fourth in a row. But while they might have been the last to win three in a row, they weren't the first.