Huddersfield Town's Mark Cartwright on Andre Breitenreiter: I asked, 'Is this real? How is this possible?'

Breitenreiter, who has coached Schalke, Hannover, Zurich and Hoffenheim amongst others takes his first Terriers game at Watford on Saturday after an extensive search since Darren Moore’s January sacking.

Cartwright, who led it, was so impressed by what Breitenreiter offered with an energetic gegenpressing style of play like that favoured by top German coaches such as Jurgen Klopp and in a Terriers context David Wagner he doubted at first if it could be delivered.

"Immediately when you look into his background, his CV and the success he has not only in developing teams and developing players but also clubs, making them successful and continuing that success, it was very apparent this was someone we had to speak to," said Cartwright.

"We had a very good initial Zoom call at which point I found a mutual friend of ours and basically said, 'Is this real? How is this possible?' He reassured me this is possible.

"We spoke very clearly about the steps we wanted to take and it was the fact it was realistic, it wasn't pie in the sky.

"We had some very good conversations around the team and the project in general and from that moment we started thinking, ‘We've got our man.’"

Cartwright was also impressed at how quickly the new coach not only identified the problems which have seen Huddersfield embroiled in another Championship relegation fight 12 months after coming through their last one, but also solutions.

"The level of detail that Andre did into researching the team and the style of play, when we met about a week, 10 days ago, he came with three or four different formations with all the players in each position and it just made perfect sense," he said.

"Whilst he may not have seen every game it took him two seconds to see what the players were, what he could do, how much further he could take them, where the issues were.

"That was the sign of the coach we're getting."