Huddersfield Town smiles are Neil Warnock's best weapon as he is lured back by old flame

Lured back by an old flame, the 74-year-old will be on the touchline on Saturday, kicking off his second Huddersfield Town spell at home to Birmingham City.

Keeping the Terriers in the Championship is why he is here, a desperate act by a club on its third manager/coach this season. Smiling is how he plans to do it.

Since last season's play-off final, life not been a barrel of laughs. Carlos Corberan's pre-season resignation was a blow, Lewis O'Brien and Harry Toffolo’s departures hard to take. Danny Schofield's brief but ill-fated tenure set them off on the wrong foot and Mark Fotheringham could not to right them.

Chairman Dean Hoyle putting the club up for sale as financial issues beset the ground built during Warnock's first spell was kicking a Terrier when it was down.

In the relegation zone with now only 15 games left, the call went out to an energetic pensioner adept at defying odds.

"First and foremost we've got to put bums on seats and make people smile," he says. "It's been quite a depressing place of late and there's enough depression around with everything going off in the world.

"I always found if Huddersfield people see lads giving everything, they'll forgive them a few faults.

"One of my hardest jobs was Middlesbrough doing it in a pandemic. I felt responsible for getting us through that period.

"I think I was instrumental in a lot of that. I thought I would have got them promotion that season I was got rid of and it looks like they're going to get it this year."

When Warnock retired from football – again – last season, it did not take a brain surgeon to work out he would be back, but the clubs he would have climbed off his tractor for are in places he has been before.

The man who delayed arriving to spend Valentine's night with wife Sharon in New York is an old romantic and 1993-95, when he took Town to Wembley twice and promotion, pulls at his heart strings.

"I was taken aback when I came as guest for the Stoke game," he says. "A lot of people in their mid-40s were kids then so it means a lot to them.

"I want them to be excited and go home talking about the game, not ‘He can't do this and that.’

"It's very difficult to replicate what you've had but I've always got on well with Dean and his wife and there's still people at the club there when I was.

"I look at the stadium and I helped to build that. I thought it might have had a ski slope the other side at the time, I got a bit carried away.

"I used to take the players to the building works, walk up to the back of the concrete, sit down and tell them this is the place to be next year.

"The promotion was unbelievable and the bus ride, going around the town with horns blasting. "

He needs that enthusiasm again.

"The fans are going to have to pay their part," he says. "It'll be nice to get the crowd buzzing – it might only be for half an hour!"

The response the self-styled dinosaur’s return is one of hope.

"I think I'm good at my job," he explains. "They call me Marmite Man but you need characters."

There is still plenty of fight in him as he returns to the division which could be his Mastermind subject.

"Burnley have been fantastic, far better than I ever thought," he says.

"Michael (Carrick) came in at Middlesbrough and put an arm around a few, that's all they needed, they've got great players.

"They've had loads of injuries at Sheffield United and yet Paul (Heckingbottom)'s still going strong.

"But it's a much of a muchness. Bottom of the league can beat top any day of the week.

"I felt a bit sorry for Huddersfield last year, I thought they got stitched up in the play-off final with two penalties (denied them). Then they lost O'Brien and Toffolo.

"You make a mistake, try and get out of it and make another mistake."

You do not spend 42 years in management without evolving –unfathomably to him he become a Twitter favourite upon joining this season – but Leigh Doughty will still need his earplugs in the technical areas.

"I know I'm not perfect and I know some people don't like me or what I am but I'm not going to change now, am I?” he says. “Yorkshiremen do say what they think and it's cost me a few quid over the years.

"I try not to shout as much but I'm sure I will be vociferous."

The John Smith's Stadium surely will be too. Whether they are smiling on coronation weekend or not remains to be seen, but he has breathed new life into an ailing club.