As the season opener approaches for Town, I found it hard to preview this season because I can’t make my mind up about the kind of year we should expect as Town fans. Obviously last season was a terrible time for the club but lots has changed since our relegation from the Premier League.

In the end, I decided to make two separate and contradictory season previews. One for the optimists and one for the pessimists. I like to look on the bright side, so I’m starting with the positive views first. The negative one will be up on the blog shortly. Here are my reasons I think Town can expect a good year:

Jan Siewert has a clear vision about how he wants to play and it suits our squad

Siewert has been quite clear about the way he wants Town to play. We’ll mostly lineup 4-3-3 and will play with attacking intent whenever possible. When we don’t have the ball we’ll press the opposition hard at the point the ball turns over but will drop back in if that doesn’t work immediately.

Siewert inherited a squad that was built by David Wagner to play a very similar style of football and recruitment since then has been with this approach in mind. Whether you like this style or not, Town have a particular style of play and Siewert’s time at Dortmund Under-23s has given him a great grounding in this Yorkshire variation on Gegenpressing.

Town’s fans are genuinely among the best in the country

There were countless factors that worked in Town’s favour when we achieved our remarkable promotion in the 2016/17 season, but I believe the fans played a major part. Both home and away, the crowd have consistently cheered on their team regardless of the score.

The Championship season is notoriously long and provides plenty of twists and turns. The consistent support from the Town faithful is sure to be a valuable asset and could make the difference in the crucial moments in the season. Despite last season being unremittingly bleak, the Town fans kept singing at every game and didn’t let the action on the pitch spoil the atmosphere.

The national sports press were generally pretty scathing in their assessment of Town last year. However, they nearly always made reference to how amazing our fans were, particularly when compared to the sedate experiences in other Premier League grounds.

We’ve got an ambitious new owner

The Dean Hoyle era is over for Huddersfield Town, but Phil Hodgkinson in now in charge and Town are still lucky enough to have another genuine fan owning them. Very few teams in the top two leagues can say that, so we should be relieved that the person running our club should have the club’s best interests at heart. It would have been terrible if some faceless asset stripper took over and undid all of Hoyle’s excellent work.

It’s not clear how things will pan out under Hodgkinson, but he has come across well in the interviews I’ve seen and seems like the right sort of person you’d want to own your club. He’s spoken about his ambition for Town going forward and I think he’s looking to build a squad that’s capable of building up to promotion to the Premier League.

Our summer signings seem like good business

While we’ve not spent the kind of money this transfer window as we did in our Premier League years, the players we’ve brought in look to be good business. Josh Koroma and Reece Brown seem like bargains. While neither have played at a high level yet, they’re young, look to be exciting players already and are likely to improve greatly under Siewert’s coaching.

Herbert Bockhorn was snapped up for a relatively small sum from Dortmund Under-23s and should adjust quickly to Town’s system after playing for Siewert before. He’s played relatively little football for his age due to niggling injuries, so if he keeps fit he might kick on and we may have got a bargain.

Tommy Elphick doesn’t fit the same profile as the other signings, as he’s ridiculously experienced at Championship level, but he brings in much-needed leadership qualities. Fans of every former club sing his praises both as a footballer and as a person, so I think we’ve been wise to bring him in.

While it’s easy for fans to grumble when Town don’t break the bank on signings, I’m pleased with the way we’ve handled ourselves this transfer window. Rather than try to spend our way back to the Premier League, we’ve filled in gaps and built with one eye on the future.

We’re in the strongest financial position we’ve ever been in

Town’s wage bill in the season we were promoted from the Championship was in the region of £11m a year but this year we’ll receive about four times that amount in parachute payments from the Premier League. This means we can afford to pay wages vastly more than the club brings in from ticket sales and Championship TV money.

These next few years of parachute money give Town an advantage over many other similar sized teams in the league. There isn’t space to go into the rights and wrongs of this system here, but it’s fair to say that we’ve got more money sloshing around now than we have had in our past and this is bound to improve our chances.

The players that struggled in the PL could thrive in the Championship

There are a fair few players in Town’s squad that have something to prove this season. For example, Steve Mounié was low on confidence last season and spurned countless opportunities. I’m not ready to write him off though, as he still looks to have all the attributes of a classy striker. There are quite a few strikers that have bagged plenty of goals in the second-tier but not been quite good enough for the top-flight. Mounié could be our David Nugent.

I’d put Kachunga, VLP, Mbenza, Diakhaby, Pritchard and Quaner in this category too. They all showed glimpses of their potential in the Premier League but I’d hope a few of these players will really kick on this season when up against less stingy defences.

We’ve (so far) managed to keep our best players

I’d have expected Town to have already sold Mooy, Schindler, Kongolo and Hogg by this point in the transfer window but so far they’re part of Siewert’s plans for the upcoming season. We’ve still got a few days left before the UK window closes and even longer for teams in other countries but the indication is that we’ll only sell if our valuations are met.

I was impressed that the club managed to sell Billing for £15m despite being out of favour with the club and entering the final year of his contract. This transfer fee suggests to me that Phil Hodgkinson was telling the truth when he said it would take serious bids for us to sell the better players we have in our squad.

There’s a good atmosphere around the camp

I’ve mentioned it in earlier posts, but the signs around the squad are that the atmosphere has changed. The pressure has lifted now and Town’s players look to be enjoying their football again. This should allow them to play with more freedom and creativity, which is something we sorely missed last season.

We’ve an abundance of attacking options

Goals were hard to come by last season but our squad is packed with attacking talent now. We have nine players in the squad to fill the most advanced three positions on the pitch, so Siewert is going to have a lot of players to choose from.

I can imagine this wealth of attacking players being rotated regularly, so we can pick the players best equipped to hurt the opposition. If a team we’re playing is weak in the air then Mounié can play up front and we’ll bombard the penalty area with crosses. Teams that are slow at the back might find themselves run ragged by Diakhaby, Mbenza and Grant’s pace. If a team can’t cope with tricky players then Pritchard and van La Parra could be used to draw penalties. And if all else fails we can throw Collin Quaner on and see what happens. They won’t know what’s hit ‘em!

I genuinely don’t know what kind of season Town are going to have but there are signs, if you’re looking for them, that we’re set up to have a good year. Sadly there are also omens that things might not go to plan, so keep your eyes peeled for my miserable fan’s preview of Huddersfield Town’s upcoming season.