A huge welcome to gibfootballshow for Charlie Johnson . As a long suffering fan of Huddersfield Town he gives us the low down on their chances of promotion this season, and why it’s important they get out of League One ASAP

Until this season Rochdale had spent 36 years in the same division, and my biggest fear as a Huddersfield fan is that we’ll replicate that feat of stagnation and be in League One for an awfully long time.

As a team we rarely flirt with relegation, and usually come within a whisker of promotion, but ultimately we stay in the same division, with every season promising so much, but delivering only increasingly yet expected bitter disappointment.

To truly understand how desperate Huddersfield fans are to gain promotion, I must offer a little context and attempt to explain why we’ve all become increasingly impatient in our little corner of West Yorkshire.

Seven years ago we returned to League One, with the intention being to make a short stop before moving on to the Championship. As is so often the case the best laid plans will often go wrong, and so that proved to be in our now numerous attempts to escape from our League One prison.

In the last seven years we’ve had four different managers, two failed play off campaigns, and a number of mid table finishes. Not forgetting huge player turnover, a caretaker manager and two separate and very different owners.

After the short stop turned in to seven long years, our time in England’s third tier has now become comparable to that of the plight of Sisyphus. We keep nearly reaching the top before spectacularly tumbling back down again, and it has created a very frustrated atmosphere at the Galpharm these days.

Despite the fact that every fresh season brings the expectation of promotion, unlike most sides we can now legitimately push for a promotion place. There has been a significant amount of money spent on players, And manager Lee Clark has got the team playing good football, good enough to be part of the promotion chase.

It is no longer a case of hope over expectation as it might have been in the pre Dean Hoyle era, these days we expect to win. We have assembled a very good squad of players who are capable of winning against any team in the league.

As things stand Huddersfield sit third in the league, after a goalless draw against potential promotion rivals Colchester, we’re on a great run in the league and things are looking good for the second half of the season. We also have a plum FA cup tie away at Arsenal to look forward to.

At the moment things are looking good, but there are worrying signs that could yet derail our promotion push this year: Striker Jordan Rhodes looks to be out for a month, and although a year or so ago that wouldn’t have been such an issue, we no longer have two or three regular scoring strikers to take his place.

Lee Novak hasn’t recaptured the form of last year, loanee Benik Afobe looks promising but is unlikely to score with the required frequency, and as for Alan Lee, well he has the same amount of goals for Huddersfield Town as David May (glory grabber who played a game on loan), Alex Smithies (goalkeeper) and myself (fan and hopeless footballer, imagine a fat David May).

Damien Johnson’s injury upset the midfield, although his replacement Kevin Kilbane is my new hero and has stepped in capably. On the positive front, if he plays as well as he did in the opening few games of the season then the hopefully soon to be returning Gary Naysmith will solidify our traditionally shaky defence.

That defence will need to be at its best when “Town” travel to the Emirates, although I fear we might get a proper drubbing followed by a national patronising by the pundits on every TV network. At the very least we get to be “Brave Huddersfield” for a couple of hours.

Once the Arsenal game is over we can get back to focusing entirely on the league although I suppose there is still a slim chance that we’ll progress in the Johnstone’s Paint Trophy, but I just can’t see us overturning a 4 goal deficit against Carlisle.

Along with most modern football fans, I’d substitute a good cup run for league successes, and although I want to win every game I’d accept an almost inevitable heavy beating at the Emirates and further humiliation against Carlisle if it meant we won promotion. The game of football is rarely that simple however.

As John Paul Sartre stated: “In football everything is complicated by the presence of the other team” and although we have a team more than capable of competing in this league there will still be those results that have you scratching your head in disbelief, and although it seems like our divine right to gain promotion we are competing with some good teams.

Southampton and Brighton have the quality to run away with the league, Bournemouth might fall apart now that their talismanic manager has left them, or they might pull together and continue their impressive rise through the leagues. The other contenders like Colchester, Charlton, Peterborough and Sheffield Wednesday cannot be ignored.

I do still think that we can realistically expect promotion this year, but it’s far from a sure thing and with so many teams at a similar level, my fears of staying in this division for eternity might just continue.

To read more of Charlie’s work, please visit his superb website and make sure to