Huddersfield boss David Wagner 'satisfied' with transfer activity after 'extraordinary' pre-season

By Declan Olley

Friday 10 August 2018 14:00, UK

Huddersfield head coach David Wagner is "happy" with the club's summer transfer business and has lauded their pre-season as "one of the best he's ever had".

The Terriers made nine signings at a cost of £30m in the summer transfer window, including the capture of defender Terence Kongolo from Monaco for a club-record fee of £17.5m plus bonuses.

Following the deadline day arrival of Belgian winger Isaac Mbenza, three of their new additions play in forward positions and Wagner is pleased to have strengthened his attacking options as the club embark on only their second Premier League season.

Asked whether he was happy with the business completed, Wagner said: "Yes, absolutely. I'm satisfied with what we have done.

"It was the first time for us since I've been here that we were very active late in the window - usually we do everything very early in the window. But this is now the nature and the circumstances in which we work, and we have to accept it and I think we dealt with it very well.

"I'm very satisfied with what we've done and I'm now looking forward to working with this group of players.

"We wanted to strengthen our offence - there's no doubt about it after last season.

"We wanted to have a little bit more pace in our squad as well and I think with our signings, especially in the offence, we've done this. I'm very happy with all of our signings."

Huddersfield take on Chelsea at home in their opening game of the new season and the German believes his side are in great shape for the campaign ahead.

He said: "I'm very happy with pre-season because we had no real injury concerns in the pre-season - only [Juninho] Bacuna was out for two-and-a-half weeks.

"Everybody else, apart from Danny Williams who was injured from last season, was able to train more or less every second and this make me so happy.

"This gives me the confidence to say this was for sure one of the best pre-seasons I've ever had as a manager and a player - only because everybody was able to make every second of training in pre-season.

"No knocks, no illnesses where someone has to be out for three days and this was extraordinary - it gives me a good feeling that the pre-season was a very, very good one.

"Pre-season is about getting training and match minutes in the player's legs. They've done fantastic - forget the results, forget the performances in the test matches. They were able to get these minutes in their legs and it will suit the whole group over the next 10 months.

"Even if Chelsea is the first game, it's not the only game of the season - this will be a very, very long season where we have to be on our best fitness wise and I think we have used the first six weeks very, very well to be as good as prepared as we can."