Huddersfield Town: Claim made on Adama Traore regret after Mbenza and Diakhaby deal | OneFootball

The pair were brought in to add extra goals to the Terriers' side, but left with just a handful of strikes between them

All football fans will have a story of the one that got away, with rumours of potential deals continuously circulating through the transfer window.

What makes things worse in that regard, is not only when you see that player go on to thrive for another club, but the second-choice transfer target comes in and is an immediate flop.

Huddersfield Town, like many others, have their own tale in that regard, with the Terriers licking their lips when pocket rocket Adama Traore was linked with a move to the John Smith’s Stadium, only to see two inferior stars join the club instead.

Isaac Mbenza and Adama Diakhaby failed to live up to the billing after the Traore deal fell through, and Football League World’s Huddersfield fan pundit Graeme Rayner still rues their signings to this day.

Huddersfield Town fail with Adama Traore interest as Wolverhampton Wanderers swoop

The summer of 2018 were the heady days at Huddersfield Town, with the Terriers maintaining their place in the Premier League, having finished 16th in their first season back in the top flight for over 45 years.

The Yorkshire outfit will have been putting their best laid plans in place to kick on in the following campaign, and looked to be setting out their stall with early links to Middlesbrough speedster Traore.

With an £18 million release clause in his contract, Town were said to be racing Wolverhampton Wanderers for his signature, but a delay in proceedings hampered their plans, as Rayner expands on.

The Terriers fan said: “One time the club got it wrong in the transfer window was in the summer after we survived in the Premier League for the first time.

“We were rumoured to be interested in Adama Traore when he was at Middlesbrough, we didn’t sign off on a deal because he got injured playing for Boro, but if we had got in sooner he wouldn’t have played for Boro that night.

“Instead, we got in Adama Diakhaby and Isaac Mbenza, and they were both pretty poor. Mbenza was the better of the two but they were both pretty poor and we spent a lot of money on them.”

Traore went on to join Wolves later in the summer, tore the majority of the Premier League to shreds, and the rest is history, leaving Town wondering what might have been.

Isaac Mbenza, Adama Diakhaby fail to impress for Huddersfield Town

With the Traore debacle put behind them, Town made moves to bring Mbenza to the club from Montpellier, with the Terriers said to have forked out £11 million for the Frenchman.

Diakhaby also made the move to England, having joined in a deal said to be in the region of €10million from Monaco, although neither failed to live up to the billing.

Between them, they featured 34 times in that 2018/19 campaign and netted just once, with Mbenza earning his claim to fame with an equaliser against Manchester United in Town’s final home match of the season.

The pair would both go on to leave on loan for the following campaign, with Diakhaby spending some of the season with Nottingham Forest, while Mbenza had a stint back in France with Amiens.

The latter played his part in the Championship campaign the following year as the Terriers narrowly avoided relegation, with 12 goal contributions from his 36 league matches, while the former’s career in Yorkshire slowly dwindled, before departing for Amiens in the February of 2021.

Every time Town fans see Traore tearing down the wing they must wince with the knowledge of how close they came to securing his services, while the thought of Mbenza and Diakhaby must make them shudder.

Alex Pritchard's injury woes scupper time with Huddersfield Town

Another name that Town fans would add to the list of failed transfers would be that of Alex Pritchard, with the creative midfielder said to have cost the club a fee in the region of £11 million back in 2018.

With just three goals from his 80 league games in blue and white, the playmaker - who has since gone on to play for Sunderland and Birmingham City, before moving to Turkish outfit Sivasspor this summer - still wrangles Rayner to this day.

"The other obvious one that Town fans would point to in recent years would be Alex Pritchard.

"We signed him from Norwich at a time when James Maddison was the other bright light there.

"I'm not sure we would have ever managed to sign James Maddison, but we signed Alex Pritchard, and he largely did nothing in a Town shirt during his time at the club, apart from keeping the physios busy."

As the old saying goes: you can't win them all, but Town seem to have had their fair share of transfer mishaps in recent seasons, and will be hoping to avoid a repeat with the business they have secured this summer, as they look to return to the Championship at the first time of asking.