Kevin Nagle interview: Huddersfield Town's season so far, stadium status, new board appointment and more

Huddersfield Town chairman Kevin Nagle joins the We Are Terriers podcast this week to give us his view on how things are going at the club on and off the pitch, including updates on various things behind the scenes.

If you want to skip straight to Nagle (and who could blame you), that chat begins at 26:38 on the podcast, and we’ve also provided a transcript below — but before that, Steven Chicken and David Hartrick discuss the 3-1 win over Bristol Rovers and Tuesday night’s goalless draw at Wrexham.

If you’re not already subscribed to We Are Terriers and want to listen, why not take the opportunity to sign up for a 7-day free trial? Can always bin us off after a week if you fancy, but we reckon you’ll like it — especially as you’ll also get full access to all our written content, including this weekend’s impending game against Exeter.

Kevin Nagle interview in full

Steven Chicken: Kevin, thanks for joining me. There’s plenty going on this season. Give us your thoughts on the season as a whole on the pitch so far, first of all.

Kevin Nagle: I think overall we’re pretty satisfied. We’ve obviously had some ups and downs. We really started off the pre-season great. The early part of the season, the first few games, fine, and then obviously we had that flat spot and then we went down rather quickly. But we’re back and recovering.

We’ll know maybe a little bit more in the next couple of matches but I really feel now like we’ve found our footing because we’ve got some consistency on the pitch.

SC: As you say, it’s been up, down, up again, hasn’t it? Michael Duff started great and he was saying at the beginning, “We’re expecting to have a tough spell here, don’t take winning for granted.” Is that your attitude as well?

KN: I think it was. He had a lot of new players – players that we selected, players as you know that we focused on, that we wanted to bring into the club. But you don’t have them all together working in harmony and it’s nice to see in the first few matches when people are playing well and winning matches. But none of us had the illusion that it was going to be indefinite.

And he was still mixing and matching and trying to figure out who was going to play, but I feel that we’ve really got pretty much a steady ship now. I think we know where we have to go. Obviously, we’ve got some injuries that play into that. But I feel really pretty comfortable. It’s really just, don’t panic.

SC: You did a lot of summer business and the club made clear you had funded that. Was that in recognition of the fact that after last season and some departures, maybe not as many as you thought, that you needed to reinvigorate the squad?

KN: I think there were a couple of considerations, obviously, once we were relegated. Do you play the same type of players in the Championship that you do in League One? Because now, you’ve got some restrictions. You’ve got some financial restrictions that you have to take into consideration.

But also, I think, really look at culture. Culture was really a driving force. We inherited the club. That is what it is at the time, but we wanted to change that culture to a winning culture.

What I really liked when we interviewed Michael, he was really seeing the same things that we were about getting a winning culture and moving that doesn’t happen overnight.

When you’ve had essentially a generation of the same culture, you want to swich that. That’s going to take new players, younger players but also some players with experience, and so I think we’re really optimising that right now. But it’s going to take a little while longer.

SC: The previous manager, Andre Breitenreiter, had spoken about that culture and things in the dressing room needing to change. I presume you took those concerns quite seriously and set about addressing them. Did you agree with what Andre was saying.

KN: I think I agreed with some. I’m not sure I agreed with all. Let’s be candid: I think sometimes managers have to defend themselves if the performance on the pitch isn’t what they want or maybe what they expected.

But all things considered I did feel that we needed to make some changes, and I think that we knew that we were just going to go in a different direction altogether.

As you know, we’re going to build an academy in the future. We hope we’re going to see some players come out of the academy. How many, we don’t know. But that’s going to take some time.

And then also just because there was a change in the political structure through Brexit and the financial considerations that fell out of that, we knew that we also had to move differently as well.

So, we knew we were going to have to invest more in the right type of players, really just create that winning culture more than anything else. And some of that winning culture is sort of subjective, but really we were evaluating players before we’d actually sign them, as to where their mind was, their head, were they team players versus individuals. Plus, you’d look at their history and you do background checks, all those things, in addition to the standard things like what is their technical skill.

And you put all these things together and hopefully you’re going to have somebody that you don’t have those issues with in the locker room that maybe you had in the past.

SC: The sporting director job is a bit of a lightning rod for criticism, people judge on signings. But you did get a lot of players through the door. One or two, you missed out on, through no fault of your own, I think, but are you happy with the business you were able to get done over the summer?

KN: I think I am. Mark [Cartwright, sporting director] unfortunately takes a lot of criticism but Mark has done a really solid job. Like I’ve said before, Mark is only one person in the player selection process because he’s got a group of people that he works with. He works with the manager; he works with me. We sign off on everything and so a lot of those things that I referred to earlier, you know, they’ve got to check those boxes.

Just as an example, are they League One-type players? Have they played in the Championship before? Because we know our next immediate goal is to get back in the Championship. Do they have that capability? What was their performance in the Championship? What was their performance in League One?

Then you start really talking about the culture side. Are they team-oriented? Are they flexible on the pitch? Just a whole cadre of different characteristics that I think people sort of forget. But it’s not one person that makes that decision, and they’re not making that decision based on one particular agency maybe that they work with.

So, I’m still super confident. I feel very good about Mark, he’s very open and I think very objective, and he’s passionate as well. And when you have passion, we know there’s always an opportunity.

SC: Yeah, I think the agency thing has become a bit of a pet conspiracy theory. I’ve looked through the player list and there doesn’t seem to be any particular pattern there.

KN: There’s no substance to that. I spend a little bit of time on X. I come and I go, sometimes more so if I have a little bit more time, and I can read that, and I can see that it’s sometimes heavily stacked.

The one thing I think I’ve learned being in the UK is that most of the sporting directors take criticism. If you’re not winning, they take a lot of the criticism. Sometimes they take as much brunt as the manager.

SC: Obviously Mark came in when the takeover happened but this summer you’ve been busy with recruitment behind the scenes as well. You’ve got a new revenue officer, etc., David [Threlfall-Sykes] has taken the step up to COO. Do you feel like you’re getting that team backstage here in the new offices?

KN: Yes, there’s a lot to do. There is a lot that we had to change. We had to build, really, the infrastructure, and we’re not even really there yet.

Some of these jobs are very specialised. You mentioned the revenue officer, we had to build on the sponsorship side and really on the marketing and branding side, and on the side that has the vision that all the employees buy in. And I think they’re not used to that. It’s not that some of them who were here before didn’t have some of that, but we’ve got a special vision that we want to move.

We want to win a championship one day and my goal, I’ll say this much, is every single person in the room if you walk up to them, they’re going to be able to say, “Our goal is to win a championship and my role in winning that championship is this.”

And we’re not there yet, but we’ll get there.

SC: You’ve got a new addition to the board that’s been announced today, Rupert Campbell is coming on as the non-executive director. Can you tell us a bit about his role? He was formerly at adidas, can you tell us a bit more about his background?

KN: Yeah, really I’d say Rupert is just a great find. Rupert’s got a really storied history and first of all, he’s from Huddersfield and that’s just one of the really great parts, and he’s also a Town fan. So, it was sort of ironic to me and then what I learned is that he lives in Portland, which is basically an hour by plane from where Sacramento is.

So, we had a chance to meet and talk about what he wanted to do. While he was at adidas he had some incredible decisions that he had to make, and it was interesting talking to him.

And he knows a lot about Huddersfield history and, I forgot, his last name is Campbell and of course his nephew is Fraizer Campbell who I think played on the England national team and also Huddersfield and also in the Premier League.

It just made a lot of sense and once I sort of interviewed him and we had a chance to talk, I could see he could be of real value to us. He’s here today, as you can see, and I’m delighted to have him, but he’s the first of a couple of people that I’ll bring onto the board.

SC: He’s the former president of the US operation for adidas, so extremely senior and he’s a good brain to pick.

KN: Very much so, and he reported to Germany but most of adidas’s revenue, I think, when you look at that side of the business, came out of the North American continent. So, it gave him, really, the greatest responsibility and he had to deal with certain challenges when he first got there and it was amazing what he did. So, I feel very fortunate to have him on the board.

You talked on your diary this week about revenue generation. For any business that’s the number one goal, I know football is a bit of an oddity in that, but is that an ongoing goal to try to raise the revenue as much as possible? What’s the strategy on that?

KN: We have to raise the revenue as high as possible. First of all, the model, the economic model and how you buy and sign players is predicated upon your revenue model. And unfortunately we have a very low revenue number compared to others in the league. Even in League One, we just don’t perform there.

That is really the driving force. I think there are going to be a lot of people who are going to endure some economic pain. I don’t have a problem saying we’re losing a lot of money in the club right now, but our goal really is to focus on the top line, the revenue line, because that is going to be the future of us being able to buy quality players.

There are a lot of people who talk about, you know, “Get the chequebook out!” but we do have limits on that. We just do. That’s the league, that’s just the regulations. But the number that you calculate is that revenue number that’s 90, 80, 70 percent that we can spend on getting players. And that is going to be the future unless they change that model.

That is going to be the forecast and how we’re going to do that is, as you can see, we’re modernising the stadium a lot as we speak. We going to have concerts there, that comes back to the club and that means that investment back into the club.

But we’ve got a whole cadre of ideas and plans, actually, that are in place, that really…it can’t even get us there fast enough. But I think twelve months from now we’ll look very different and I think we’ll be in a much better position as well.

SC: Is this why taking ownership of the stadium is so important to you? Just below us now downstairs you’ve got the new fan zone which, is that due to open in a few weeks, is that right?

KN: Yes.

SC: Is it about trying to keep people in the ground, keep people spending money in the ground if possible, making it an attractive place to be? To make them want to be here rather than disappear off into town and go to the pub? And if we’re going to do that then we want to keep all the money out of it, is that basically it?

KN: Well, I think that some people have the idea that this is simply self-serving, and then there’s always the question, you know, did I need to do this? Did I need to come here and buy Town which was losing a lot of money and about to go into administration or potentially go into administration?

The bottom line is, if you want to compete in any of these top leagues in the UK, you are going to need revenue. That’s just it.

But the answer to your direct question is, all these dollars are going to go back into the team because had you left the model as it was, you really had essentially three owners owning a stadium and no one person would take any ownership in specifically and that’s the reason why the capital investment into it was almost non-existent except for making sure the health and safety issues were resolved.

And so, from that standpoint, we’re on that right now. We’re taking care of it. And I think you can see that we’re not only internally taking care of issues within the infrastructure, but externally so that it does become an attractive place, and that we create H-Town, which is going to be an 800-person room that people can come to before matches, after matches, and then of course if there’s a big wedding or any corporate event and they need up to 800 people, where they can actually get served food and beverages and have a band or whatever it may be.

And then additionally we’ll have two other rooms. We’re modernising those rooms so that if you don’t need a room that big, you’ve got a room for 500 or maybe 150 where you can carry on the same type of activities.

So, we’re doing that so it’s a destination point. It’s one of the greatest assets of Huddersfield and it’s my responsibility to take it to the next level.

SC: Just to confirm the situation, there was some reporting last week about where it might be. Just confirm that nothing has been agreed yet with the council. Is that right?

KN: There’s nothing that has been finalised yet. It’s all in contractual process. We’ve signed preliminary documents that are non-binding leading to the binding contractual relationship and that’s now being handled among our attorneys.

I’d like to think it’s a formality at this point so I’d say this much: unless there’s something that we cannot see, and there might be some last-minute negotiations because, as you know, until the signature is put on the contract you can always argue that it’s not finalised, but I feel that we’re really just about there and I feel very excited actually as well about our future, being able to do some of these things.

That’s why we’re taking the risk and doing it really before we have a real reason to rationally.

SC: I think the Giants have confirmed now that they’re looking to leave the stadium. Can a deal get done before they go? Would they stay as tenants?

KN: They’re going to stay as tenants. I’ve had a really solid, good relationship with Ken Davy, of course he was a former chairman of Huddersfield Town. We had several negotiations, we finally got the deal done, and we’ve said, “Look, if you want to stay here for a period of time” – I think it might be up to five years, or at least it’s five years right now, we can always adjust that or amend it – “while you’re looking and building, have at it.”

We’ll accommodate them but I think you’ll see this to be much more of a Huddersfield Town environment as opposed to maybe a shared environment.

SC: Obviously that takes up a lot of the attention. Have you had a chance to think about what’s next in 2025 when that gets done and dusted?

KN: Well, I think I’d love to be able to say that gets done in 2025, I think it’ll take longer than that, Steven, but we need to be thinking about the future. More investment into some other areas.

In part of this deal we hope to have 53 acres, we hope to have another plot where there’s going to be a hotel, there’ll be plans and we’ll start to look for partners on that because I’m not an expert in building hotels and I don’t know a lot of British building law and those types of things.

So, we’ll look for a partner. I think really what needs to happen is, we have a great shortage of hotel space, and I think that limits many parts about Huddersfield. And I think if we got, not a five-star hotel but if we got a four-star or three-star hotel, it had all the amenities and had enough capacity in there, and I think we’re sitting it right next to us, to Huddersfield Town, our stadium right here, well then you could stay in the hotel and then come into our stadium where we’ve got rooms and food and beverages and all the things that you would need, it’s a perfect complement.

And then anyone who’s going to stay in Huddersfield for a variety of reasons, they’ve now got a nice place they can go to as well.

That’s, to me, a priority. And then we’ve got a 53-acre plot where I believe there’s the potential to do some really nice retail and then also some residences that are more affordable because there’s going to be that line that goes from Leeds to Manchester. This is a great stopping-off point, and if they can buy some more affordable housing, we’ve got something here for them.

I just sort of visualise that and really it builds its own economic community out of that.

SC: I don’t think fans would forgive me either if I didn’t ask about the January transfer window quickly. Any plans already, still too early for that?

KN: Look, there’s no question we missed on a couple of opportunities, mostly it’s not because we didn’t try, we actually had people in house, I mean literally going through physicals, that type of thing, and then there was a last-minute change.

But we’ve got some priorities. I think we know we want to get an additional striker or two if that’s a possibility, because you can never have enough of those.

We Are Terriers backers can now listen on Spotify

That’s right: Substack and Spotify accounts can now be linked, meaning you can now get access to the We Are Terriers podcast via the streaming service if you prefer.

You’ll find the show on Spotify here or by searching for We Are Terriers in Spotify, but you’ll also need to make sure your two accounts are linked. Information on how to do that is available here.

How to access the podcast elsewhere

Alternatively you can listen in-browser or in the Substack app right here by just pressing ‘play’ above - but now you’re backing us, you can also get the podcast delivered to your usual podcast app of choice if you prefer.

To do that, scroll up and click ‘more options’. You’ll then be presented with several of the more popular apps, or the option to copy the RSS feed URL into your preferred app. (Have a quick google if you’re unsure how to do this!)