Jake Edwards has been speaking on a number of topics
Huddersfield Town CEO Jake Edwards has reflected on a “good start to the season” for the club as they target a return to the Championship at the end of the campaign.
The Terriers sit fifth in the League One table, on 19 points at the ten-game mark, following Saturday’s 1-0 victory at Exeter City.
Prior to tonight’s EFL Trophy tie at Harrogate Town, Lee Grant’s side have won nine of their opening 14 matches in all competitions, including two penalty-shootout victories in the Carabao Cup against higher-league opposition.
Speaking in the aftermath of the club securing ownership of the Accu Stadium last week, Edwards told BBC Radio Leeds of his desire to see on-pitch progress: “We are a football club first and foremost, and the chairman’s (Kevin Nagle) said as much.
“The efforts around the stadium and the upgrade – yes it’s about providing a great experience, yes it’s about making sure our home is the best possible version of itself, but really it all flows back to what we are at the core, which is a football team, and we need to have success.
“We are very pleased with the way Lee’s gone about it as a first-time manager, and the detail and quality he’s bringing. We’re enjoying working with him, and him with the group. We like the new set of players that have come in, I think they’re embodying a lot of what we’re trying to build here.
“We’ve had a good start to the season despite a couple of losses. We’re a couple of points off first, we’ve had an amazing night last night with 22,000 supporters here watching us having a go against one the best teams in the world (Manchester City), and those are the nights we want to have more of, and everyone’s working in that direction.
“It’s a long season, it’s going to be a challenging season, but we’re laser focused on trying to get back to the Championship and then beyond, so a good start so far.
“I’m really pleased with the supporters who have come back and got behind this team, and are starting to have a really good relationship with the squad, so long may it continue, and obviously we hope that we’ve got the success that we’re all trying to achieve by the end of the season.”
Despite Town having had two disappointing campaigns on the pitch since Nagle’s takeover, the Terriers’ hierarchy maintain a desire to oversee a return to the Premier League.
“We’ve got our dream of what it might look like (long term), and the chairman is ambitious and impatient, and he won’t want to wait ten years,” Edwards added.
“We’re clear, we want to get this team back to the top division, and we want an infrastructure in place that supports that, and we want to create a destination within our town for concerts, events, retail, sporting excellence – we want this to be the place to come to have a great experience.
“It will look very different, this part of town over the next ten years, and so we’ve got a lot of work to do now, but today is the start of that.”
Last week’s deal means that Town have acquired sole ownership of their stadium for the first time since their move from Leeds Road in 1994, and reflecting on a landmark moment for the Terriers, Edwards said: “It’s a great day for the club and the town, it’s a long time in the making.
“We’ve been at this for quite some time now, but it’s critically important for the future sustainability of the football club that it can own and control its own stadium, participate in all of the upside of what that means, in terms of matchday and non-matchday, and really important for the stadium itself.
“This is an iconic 30-year-old stadium, and it needs work, it needs maintenance, it needs to be looked after as well as upgraded, and so those programmes are now secure with the football club behind it, and the chairman’s investment.
“We are now solely in charge of all of the touch points that supporters are going to face when they come to the stadium, rather than separate entities. We have been investing into the stadium, and that will be able to continue now, and the supporters will see as early as Stockport (on Saturday) some changes that are happening, and not just within the stadium in the short term, but over the next few years on the wider site as well.”
