Even now, many don’t realise quite how near Huddersfield Town came. ‘We were very, very close to liquidation,’ says Robert Pepper, the former chair of what was then the Huddersfield Town Survival Trust. ‘The judge was just about to liquidate the club when he was passed a note,’ adds Pepper. ‘On paper, with the figures, there was no way...’

But for Peter Sargent, one of the Premier League’s greatest tales, Huddersfield’s rise from the brink of extinction to the top flight, would not have occurred. Sargent was another member of the Survival Trust who also happened to be an insolvency practitioner. On that almost fateful day he was just another volunteer doing his bit.

However, it was Sargent’s note and persuasive words which prevented Huddersfield, winner of the First Division title in the three consecutive seasons from 1924-26, being confined to the dustbin of history.

Huddersfield Town's highly-rated boss David Wagner is looking forward to the new season

‘I think I passed the judge a note saying we’re the Survival Trust and we’ll do what we can to keep the club going,’ says Sargent, who then set about fundraising, while the players agreed to play for free. ‘God knows how we did it! I probably had my fingers crossed behind my back. But the judge seemed to listen to me as I was an insolvency practitioner.’

That was March 2003 and the club, buffeted by the collapse of ITV Digital and ongoing mediocrity and ultimately failure, were finished. They owed £1.5million to players and £500,000 in rent to the council and rugby league club who part-owned the stadium, then known as the McAlpine. At the end of the season, they were relegated to the bottom tier, Division Three.

‘The club didn’t have any assets of significant value,’ says Chris Wood, who ended up as the administrator. ‘They were tenants at the stadium, the players had not been paid, so the rules said they could give notice after two weeks. They had some memorabilia because they won the league three times in a row: to many people, simply a nice shield. I needed someone to put in enough money to deal with arrears, fund the next season at a loss.’

Steve Mounie takes on Torino's Danilo Avelar during their 2-2 draw in Austria on Friday

It didn’t sound promising. And even though a deal eventually seemed to have been agreed with Ken Davy, owner of the Huddersfield Giants rugby league team, who needed the football club to survive to make the stadium economically viable, the difficulty in getting the deal signed off by the players, other creditors, the FA and the Football League took the club to the brink once more.

‘There was a rule that you couldn’t start a season in administration says Wood. ‘If you did, you lost the Football League share, which meant you were out. And of course the buyer doesn’t want the club without the Football League share.

‘It was Friday, August 8 and they were due to play Cambridge the next day. I remember reading the local paper saying the deal was done and thinking: “It isn’t. Because I’m sat here with it.” I can tell you now, they would not have played if the deal hadn’t been done, because we wouldn’t have been able to register or insure the players.

Laurent Depoitre shields the ball from Torino's Emiliano Moretti during their pre-season match

‘We completed it at 5pm that Friday, less than 24 hours before kick-off. What would have happened if we hadn’t done that? I don’t know!

The next day it was against Cambridge, they drew two apiece, there was 10,000 there, it was a sunny day and a lot of people didn’t have a clue how close it had come.’

Even David Wagner’s laughter is inclusive and uplifting rather than dismissive. His team have been away to Germany and Austria for much of pre-season.

After that extraordinary day at Wembley just over two months ago, when promotion was secured to the Premier League on penalties against Reading, there was a huge civic reception with thousands on the streets.

But since then there hasn’t been much time to drink in the town’s gratitude. Asked whether he is aware of what is building in the town ahead of Saturday’s game against Crystal Palace, Wagner guffaws.

‘Of course! We are not totally blind and we are not stupid, as well. We feel the atmosphere here in the city and the town. And we are excited for ourselves.’

Mounie shows the solidarity Wagner has instilled by refusing to back down against Torino

Some might be tempted to downplay the clamour and manage expectations. Not Wagner. ‘I will never decelerate excitement,’ says the head coach. ‘It makes totally no sense. Everybody should keep this excitement for the first game and over the pre-season period. I think excitement helps to go over the border line if it hurts and if you feel pain.’

There are many people over several decades to whom Huddersfield owe a debt of gratitude and without whom their current incredible story could not be told. But everyone agrees that the arrival of ‘this unknown-maybe-sometimes-crazy German’ — Wagner’s own words — is the most significant turning point in the club’s recent history.

Jurgen Klopp’s team-mate at Mainz only took his UEFA coaching badges to supplement his income as a biology secondary school teacher and because the current Liverpool manager, a close friend, suggested it. He had never managed a first team when he arrived at Huddersfield in November 2015, though he had worked alongside German coaching icons such as Ralf Rangnick at Hoffenheim and then alongside Klopp at Borussia Dortmund.

But he hadn’t even visited Britain before, and he had never heard of Huddersfield. From the outside, first impressions suggested the club had appointed Klopp-lite rather than the real thing. The club were 20th in the Championship when he arrived. They finished the season 19th. Yet those closer to the club claim they knew immediately there was something different, even if they didn’t quite imagine this.

‘The players used to disappear down the tunnel after a game,’ says James Chisem, general secretary of the Huddersfield Town Supporters’ Association, the original Survival Trust. ‘The first time they won under Wagner, he lined them all up in front of the fans and got them to hold hands, joined the line and acknowledged us, like German clubs do at the end of a game.’ Robert Pepper, 77, who has seen about 70 years’ worth of Huddersfield managers, says: ‘He’s transformed everything.’

Owner Dean Hoyle, the local-born, lifelong Huddersfield fan and Card Factory multi-millionaire, should take credit. He took over the club fully in 2009. He had already revitalised crowds by slashing season tickets. They were £199 if you signed up pre-promotion. In 2008, for the club’s centenary, there was a £100 season ticket and Hoyle promised that if you renewed every subsequent season, the price would stay the same, even if (fancifully) the club were in the Premier League.

Wagner (right) with Stuttgart's coach Hannes Wolf during their pre-season friendly in Austria

That promise has been honoured, meaning a select band will watch Premier League football this season for £5 a game. It is said that Hoyle’s reasoning on appointing Wagner was that scores of British managers kept producing the same results, varying from reasonable to bad; so why not try something different?

Some believe that Hoyle might even have been wearying. ‘It was real gamble by Dean and a lot of people recognise it was a last throw of the dice,’ says Pepper. ‘He’s never said he was ready to pack it in, but it’s a common perception that he was. If things hadn’t worked, we might have become another mediocre League One club.’

There were Wagner sceptics: changing training times to mimic match times, which disrupts the lifestyle of the standard pro, wasn’t universally embraced. Everyone remarks of the increased fitness of the squad, which enables them to play with the fury which Wagner demands, but that only came with double sessions.

Wagner has earned plaudits for the way he has transformed the previously struggling club

‘We changed, but as well step by step,’ says Wagner. ‘Now, after I sit and think about what we did at the beginning, we did something radical. And now, after months, we can say this was what this team, this club needed in this moment.’

Famously there was the week away last year at a Swedish island to kick off pre-season training: no phones, no wifi, no toilets, no bed and no electricity. ‘To be fair it had the feeling of a holiday,’ says Wagner. ‘OK, holidays without a toilet, without electricity, without enough food, no good sleep.’

However, he was convinced a club with a raft of new foreign, mainly German signings, needed a way to bond. He is doing what Klopp did at Mainz — carrying a whole town with him to galvanise a small-time club. Before the derby match with Leeds United last April, vital for both promotion and local pride, Wagner had local people recorded on video to explain what the game meant to them, before showing it to his multi-cultural squad.

Loyal Huddersfield Town fans have supported their team through thick and thin over the years

And when asked what he thought of English ticket prices, he replied instinctively: ‘They’re too expensive.’ No wonder fans warm to him.

Denis Law has only good memories of Huddersfield, where he arrived, accompanied by his elder brother, as a youth on the train from Aberdeen to serve his apprenticeship. ‘I made my debut there, I got my first cap for my country,’ he says. ‘So I owe everything to Huddersfield Town. It’s so, so good that they’re coming into the Premier League. They can show that the impossible is there to be done.’

Law was 16 when he started up front on Christmas Eve 1956 against Notts County. ‘It was a tough game,’ he says. ‘That’s where I learned to look after myself. My mum and my dad were saying: “If any of these guys kick you, kick them back, because if you don’t they’ll keep kicking you.” That’s why I got sent off that many times!’ He was paid £8 a week, rising to £15 when he reached his 17th birthday.

His debut was at the old Leeds Road. ‘It was a huge stadium when we were there. There would be around 50,000 or 60,000 when we played Leeds, which was the big derby.’ Law was probably helped by the fact that Huddersfield had been relegated to the old Division Two. It meant his chance came to play in the first team.

That season Bill Shankly took over as manager. The team had England right-back Ray Wilson, who would go on to win the World Cup. But Shankly left and Law was sold for a British record £55,000 to Manchester City. ‘Perhaps that was the most potential we have had [in my lifetime],’ says Pepper. ‘But there was no vision, the board wouldn’t support Shankly, he took himself off to Liverpool and we’ve never been anywhere since then.’

In the Twenties Huddersfield were one of the giants of the English game. Three stars sit above their crest representing their three consecutive league titles, the first two under another managerial great, Herbert Chapman. But relegation in 1956 sparked a slow decline, which not even Shankly could halt. There was a brief return to the top flight inspired by Frank Worthington from 1970-72. ‘But it became a bigger and bigger struggle,’ says Pepper. By 1975 they had sunk to the fourth tier.

Town's Aron Mooy in action against Vfb Stuttgart during their pre-season tour of Austria

Like most northern mill towns Huddersfield has suffered in recent years. And while the link between football and regeneration is often overplayed, the sense of civic pride a club can give its community is not. ‘I was talking to teacher at a school in the town,’ says Pepper. ‘He said there used to be one lad in a Town shirt. Now they’re all switching. You don’t see Man City shirts any more but Town shirts.’

Wagner himself seems aware of the responsibility. ‘We will not have the best individuals next season, there is no doubt about it,’ he says. ‘We will not be able to be competitive financially, there is no doubt about it. So, we have to find our own ways, find our solutions to be successful. ‘And, at the end, it’s only the circumstances. Because even in the Premier League we play 11 against 11 on a green pitch.

‘We know that we are not the favourite in the Premier League to win the title. But we are ambitious enough to say we will work our socks off, we will try everything and make sure it’s as uncomfortable as possible for opponents. If you start in a competition, you like to have the maximum of success and results and this is what we’re working for. So we will still give ourselves no limits.’

He is inevitably focused on the task ahead. But much has already been achieved. Sargent, the man who saved the club 14 years ago, puts it succinctly. ‘When you go on holiday and people ask: “Where do you come from?” You say: “I come from Huddersfield.” And they look at you quizzically and you say: “Halfway between Leeds and Manchester.”

Well, you don’t need to say that any more because everyone in the world looks at the Premier League. You have to pinch yourself, really, thinking “Bloody Hell! Huddersfield are in the Premier League'.