David Wagner intends to put some vital finishing touches to Huddersfield Town’s Championship preparations and insists: “We’re ready for serious business.”
Town’s big kick-off is against Brentford at the John Smith’s Stadium this Saturday and the head coach believes his team are on track to excite 15,000 season-ticket holders.
Leading scorer Nahki Wells has been training over the weekend in the hope of overcoming a knee injury to sting the Bees, while Wagner is also checking on Kyle Dempsey and Sean Scannell after they weren’t risked in the 1-0 final friendly win over FC Ingolstadt.
That came at the end of a successful training-camp week in Austria and Wagner said: “We are happy the test games are over now and we can make the serious business on Saturday.
“We have another few days to work on the details and then, by Saturday, we will be as best prepared as we can.
“This is only our preparation for the start of the season, it’s not the end it’s just the beginning, so there is more work to do and we will develop. It will never stop, but we have made some steps and we will refresh and we will keep working.
“But there is a positive atmosphere around Huddersfield Town which we want to keep running and, to achieve this, we have to deliver.
“We want a good working attitude and a good performance so our fans can see this is the Terrier identity, then the most important thing is the results.”
Popular centre-back substitute Michael Hefele scored the only goal against FC Ingolstadt.
The performance and result backed up a solid 0-0 draw with Werder Bremen and left Wagner satisfied.
“It was a good test because Ingolstadt were very physical,” said Wagner, who handed a debut to Kasey Palmer as a second-half substitute.
“They tried to play with speed and we had to work against them.
“Most of the time we did that well, especially the defence where we looked good again, with good concentration.
“In the offence it was not so easy because Ingolstadt were very aggressive and played very physical.
“Unfortunately at the end we were playing 11 against 10 (Alfredo Morales was sent-off for Ingolstadt) – as a manager you always want 11 v 11 in pre-season – but we accepted that and tried to play our overload game, which we did well – so we’re happy.”
