Dean Hoyle on Huddersfield Town £100m spending, transfer policy, training ground and future at stadium

Dean Hoyle says Huddersfield Town have spent just short of £100m on transfers in the last season and a half.

The club owner says that’s been possible because Town – who give the final decision on any new signing to head coach David Wagner – have kept a sensible rein on the wage bill.

Nine years after becoming chairman, Town have moved from League One to the Premier League – and Hoyle is determined to keep them there, with a greater say for their 85% rent at the John Smith’s Stadium.

So, speaking with BBC Radio Leeds, he talked about many aspects of the club, including the proposed £20m redevelopment of the PPG Canalside training complex.

Here, in nutshell form, is what lifelong fan Hoyle said:

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The season so far

We’ve had a very difficult start.

Chelsea we had a good first half, Manchester City was one to forget and Cardiff was always going to be a difficult task against Neil (Warnock).

I was disappointed we didn’t get three points but relieved after 90 minutes to get one, because of the sending off of Jonathan Hogg.

At the time I thought it was two points dropped but, on reflection, it was a point gained, and every point in the Premier League is a golden point.

What David (Wagner) is very good at, however, is drawing a line in the sand and moving on, and everyone is working relentlessly behind the scenes for the success of Huddersfield Town.

We got a very good performance at Everton which bodes well.

It gave everyone in the club a lift.

In our time under David, when a performance is needed our coaching team deliver - not all the time but more often than not. That’s quality.

Expectations moving forward

We want to be a Premier League team for a third season.

So if we finish one place above the relegation placings then, actually, that is our job done.

That is the main thing (we want to achieve) and if I was to ask the Town fans now if they would take that, I think that everybody would say yes.

At the same time we are ambitious. We don’t want to finish down the bottom, we want to finish as high up the table as possible.

We have our expectations – we want to be a Premier League club for a third season.

Do we have limits on our ambition? No we don’t. That’s where we are.

Fans are key to success

In the Premier League you are going to lose a damned site more matches than you are in the Championship, because the quality of the opposition is starkly different.

What you have to remember is what you have as a unit.

At Huddersfield Town we are absolutely one solid unit from top to bottom left to right.

That includes the fans, we are always one.

The reason we were successful last season is that we all stood together through thick and thin.

The fans played a huge part. We kept talking about the 12th man and they were the 12th man - nailed on.

If it wasn’t for them being so with us, all together, as a unit, would we have stayed up? Possibly, but maybe not.

They got us, I believe, over that line by creating a fantastic home atmosphere.

So this season we have to have that as a standard. It has to be a given.

If the fans start splitting, which they are not, but if they start splitting and we have a slight leak in our team, a dripping tap, then it is going to make our life a lot harder.

So we are one.

I am fully behind everything, the fans are, the team are – the atmosphere in the dressing room is solid.

We need to keep that water-tight unity going forward.

Policy on transfers

We are now competing on the world stage among some incredibly good talent.

Let’s be clear, we are not in the market for established Premier League players - firstly because we don’t want journeymen and secondly because we can’t afford the astronomical wages these guys demand.

We have a really competitive wage bill and, should the worst happen, we don’t want to see the same happen to us as what happened to Bradford City or Leeds United (for example).

In the window, we knew we needed pace on the wings, and we got it.

Terence Kongolo was also a huge statement for the club and we managed to sign Erik Durm, a World Cup winner, to play either full-back.

We are buying talent – players who excite us – and we can give them a platform to be superstars in the Premier League.

That’s how we attract them and, when the time is right, we will allow them to move on hopefully for a lot more money.

We believe with David and our coaching staff we can develop players.

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Keeping David Wagner

David is committed to the football club and he always wanted to stay, but we had to make it right for him.

He is a manager who has performed miracles.

Keeping David was absolutely key to continuing things.

He will be our manager all season, even if we have a bad season – and I don’t expect us to. He will still be manager of Huddersfield Town (even if we get relegated).

If we have a bad season and, let’s say, with 10 games to go we make a change, what is that going to do?

It would be trying to give us a bit of a bounce, but Stoke didn’t get that bounce.

Continuity and consistency will bring you rewards over the longer period and that’s how we look at it at Huddersfield Town.

The role of Sporting Director Olaf Rebbe

Olaf is support for everything that David (Wagner) does.

Recruitment come up with players, David has his ideas and they all go into the hopper to be considered in detail.

Then it is up to David to say ‘that is who I want’.

He has the final say - that’s always been the way.

Adama Diakhaby, for example, was David’s first-choice winger. He made it very clear to me he was his first choice, so we went out and got him.

The amount of English-based players in the club

It’s simple, we don’t have many because the cost of English players is absolutely incredible.

But people like Phil Billing and Aaron Mooy count as homegrown players.

The foreign market is much more accessible for us, a lot cheaper and you get more value for your money.

We are right on the limit and going forward we know we have to have a better balance between British players and foreign ones.

While we know that, it will create us no problems.

The £20m redevelopment of PPG Canalside

It’s a big investment but we have to have something to show for our time in the Premier League – hopefully another 10, 15 or 20 years.

There has to be legacy left with the football club in a better position.

While we visit the stadium 25 times a year, the training ground is our home for 300 days and it has to be fit for purpose – and also fit to attract players.

Ten to 20 million doesn’t go far on players. It’s maybe a couple of players for us or a right leg for Manchester United!

So we need to create a training facility we can be proud of - a Premier League facility.

It’s something we need to do, we have to do and something we want to do, because we are a million miles behind the curve at the moment (compared with other clubs).

This is a low-hanging fruit we can grab and which will make a big difference.

As far as no public access, it’s evolution.

The pie and pint is important to us, but Premier League football is the most important thing to the town of Huddersfield.

So sacrifices have to be made but, hopefully, we can have a fan zone on match days which is nearer to the stadium and will give access to more people.

We will create a community facility down Leeds Road, it just won’t be Canalside. Having it nearer the stadium will be a step forward.

And the redevelopment will happen, it will start quite soon, whether we are in the Premier League or not.

Future at the John Smith’s Stadium

We want the stadium to represent a Premier League football club, a stadium to be proud of and, at the moment, it’s not.

Remember the Palace match will be broadcast live to 130 contries, but the stadium is a bit shabby around the edges and has had under-investment.

We pay 85% of the rent but we can’t hang a picture on the wall, so it’s a problem.

It’s a collaborative agreement (at the stadium) which is really complicated, but we want more operational control of the stadium.

We want to use the leverage of our sponsors and commercial deals to bring in more money to benefit Huddersfield Town and to benefit the stadium.

Being respectful, it is also the Giants’ home and we want them to be a part of it.

But ultimately we want to improve the stadium and currently we are the ones who can put money in.

Talks are ongoing, but nothing will be happening in the next few weeks.

But I am really hopeful a solution can be found.

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January transfer window

We will have to review and see where we are.

If we feel we need to push on I’m sure we will find a way.

We don’t want to ‘do a Swansea’ and end up paying the price for being (what their chairman called) being reckless in January.

We will have to feel the temperature and see where we are.

Over the last season and a half we have spent just short of £100m nett on transfers, so the revolving door will have to happen at some point – we just can’t keep on doing that.

The reason we’ve been able to spend that much on transfers is that our wage bill is a lot lower.

And we have been pretty successful in the last nine years on player trading, at the same time as moving the club forward.

The next five years

Results are important and are reflective of the quality of players, but we have to do things our way, not the usual run-of-the-mill Premier League way.

That means we don’t want to pay high wages for established Premier League players in the transfer market. We want to find a different solution and David Wagner has fully bought into this.

So we will scour the world for talent going forward, give them a platform to become stars and make sure, when the time is right, that we sell those players to allow us to grow.

Reinvesting wisely, we have proved we can grow steadily and we want to continue to grow steadily in the Premier League - no step changes.

We want to build securely, both behind the scenes and on the pitch.