Huddersfield Town: Tom Lees hurting but confident Terriers are good for another promotion push

It was hard to observe the desolation of Huddersfield Town’s players after Sunday’s Championship play-off final, none more so than with Lees.

The scenes were in stark contrast to the ecstasy at the other end of Wembley as Nottingham Forest celebrated for all that it was worth with their jubilant supporters after the final whistle.

A vat of salt was applied, given two hugely controversial moments which went against Town in the showpiece. Football can be so cruel. But that’s another story.

It was particularly difficult to witness several of Town’s senior brigade suffer. Captain Jonathan Hogg looked inconsolable, but perhaps the biggest sympathy was reserved for Lees, an exemplary professional who has now been kicked in the teeth on three occasions in his own quest to reach the Premier League.

It said everything about the standing of Lees, a player who has performed admirably for Leeds United, Sheffield Wednesday and now Huddersfield, that he spoke to the media after Sunday’s bitter events and did not feel sorry for himself and not hide away.

Alongside his consistency and status as a consummate ‘defender’s defender’ which ensured that head of football operations Leigh Bromby soon beat a path to Lees’s door when he was freed by the Owls last summer, his solid character as a person would have further convinced him.

The 31-year-old, who Bromby knew from his playing days at Leeds, has proved a sound addition both on the pitch and in the dressing room at Huddersfield. Genuine football people will not be surprised.

The gut-wrenching feeling that Lees experienced on the hallowed turf last Sunday was akin to events six years earlier when he was part of a Wednesday line-up who fell at the final play-off hurdle against Hull City in the Championship finale in May 2016.

A year later, Lees was part of an Owls side beaten on penalties in the semi-final against his current club. There were more tears for the blue and white this time around.

He said: “I have been there before and it is difficult. There is a cliché in football that you can get a hangover next season and that is what we have got to avoid.

“We have got to go away and get over it and life does go on.

“If you look back at some of the nights we had in the season and some of the times, we have come off on cloud nine. It’s been a great season. But it was just hard to take at the end. I am sure at some point, we will look back and think we have done alright.

“It is rare to get a dressing room and squad like this and a group that is so close. We will see what happens. That is one of the hardest things, knowing that things might change and it might be the last time for this group.”

At his previous club, Wednesday’s squad did stick together for another crack at promotion in 2016-17 and were unfortunate to bump into an inspired Huddersfield side, who produced one of the stand-out stories of that campaign under David Wagner, in the play-offs that following spring.

Huddersfield will do well to keep hold of star turn Lewis O’Brien this summer, but aside from that, the main protagonists will hopefully be around for another go.

After the club’s outstanding recruitment last summer, which saw the Terriers effectively build a new-look defence and focus on getting that part of the team right first, attention will switch to additions further up the pitch. ‘Phase two’ if you like.

Should Town get that right and invest any proceeds from any potential sale of O’Brien with as much shrewdness as they showed last summer, there is no reason whatsoever that they cannot be in the mix again in 2022-23.

Lees is the first to admit it will be tougher. Town will have more of a target around their necks next term and they won’t have the element of surprise.

But once wounds have healed after Forest, expect a good dressing room to be ready to start another journey under the watch of a head coach whose star is in the ascendancy in Carlos Corberan.

Regardless of who comes or goes, the Spaniard is surely the club’s biggest asset.

On the prospects of Town being in the promotion mix again with one or two canny additions, Lees continued: “Definitely. We have shown that this season and it is probably important we keep some as well.

“That’s not up to me, we will see what happens. But we have got to have faith in the club. They did superbly last summer and the set-up is fantastic and there’s good people running it. We have got to have faith that they will make those good decisions again and we can regroup and go again.

“You look at the teams coming down and they are all going to have a good go. There are teams that maybe have not fulfilled their potential last season who won’t accept how their season went and they will obviously be stronger as well. It will be a tougher season.

“But Carlos has been fantastic. It speaks for itself, doesn’t it. He has spent nothing and it’s been free transfers and loans.

“Some people said last summer was a very uninspiring transfer window. But look what he has done with it, fair play to him.”