"An unpleasant time" - Huddersfield Town regret pinpointed over Ipswich Town transfer deal | OneFootball

It's a move that may have cost the Terriers promotion, and still causes pain to this day

This article is part of Football League World’s 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

There are certain transfer deals that gnaw away at fans, but none quite as much as Huddersfield Town’s decision to sell Marcus Stewart to Ipswich Town in the final three months of the 1999/2000 season.

The forward had scored 14 league goals for Huddersfield in the second tier of English football before his switch to Portman Road, and proved to be pivotal for his new club rising to the top tier.

Meanwhile, back in West Yorkshire, the Terriers finished just adrift of the play-off places - perhaps missing a sharp-shooting striker that had them well in contention for the top six at the time.

FLW's Terriers Fan Pundit, Graeme Rayner, puts the decision to cash in on Stewart for £2.5 million at a pivotal part of the season - to a divisional rival no less - down as one of his club’s biggest regrets in recent history.

Speaking to Football League World, Graeme said: “There’s a couple of options (of recent club regrets). I mean there’s the fact that in our second season in the Premier League, we didn’t do what many fans thought we should do, which is invest in players experienced at that level, and we gambled on what we thought were high potential players, and we paid the price.

“But most Town fans would say that the decision we most regret was that in 1999/2000 season, Town were flying high and sold Marcus Stewart to Ipswich Town during the run-in at the end of the season.

“I think we sold him around March time, so, you know, with about 70 per cent of the season done, we sold him to Ipswich Town, who were rivals at the time.

“And, in the end, Ipswich won the play-offs, he scored two goals in the first semi-final, when they were 2-0 down, scored a goal in the final, and we finished two points off the play-off places.

“Many Town fans believe, hand on heart, that if we had held on to Marcus Stewart, we would have got into the play-offs, and potentially he would have fired us up to the Premier League.

“Andy Booth was still in his pomp at the time and a Stewart/Booth combination would have been interesting.

“And that was at a time when teams promoted to the Premier League had a chance, they had a real chance at survival in the longer term. The rich/poor divide hadn’t kicked in as much.

“The chairman at the time, Barry Rubery, had massive protests at the stadium about him, and, yeah, there were really ugly scenes.

“So, yeah, it was an unpleasant time. And even more unpleasant is what’s happening to Marcus Stewart now, who I believe is suffering with MND and a lot of his former clubs have done a lot of fundraising and so on for him, so I wish Marcus Stewart all the best.

“But, yeah, if we’d never sold him he may well have fired us to the Premier League, a good 17 years earlier than we eventually got there.”

Marcus Stewart could have led Huddersfield into a new era

Terriers fans will be forever left wondering how much of a difference Stewart could have made had he stayed on for a few more months.

Moreover, if he had made the difference Graeme and others believe he could, then his time at Ipswich proved that he had the ability to also carry a team through that transition to the Premier League.

In the following season, Stewart’s first in the top tier, he hit 19 goals in 34 appearances, undoubtedly playing a pivotal role in the Tractor Boys’ survival that year.

Had he stayed, he could have ushered in a whole new era for the Yorkshire club, at a time when they may have stood a chance of establishing themselves in the Premier League, and Stewart proved to be a man capable of facilitating that transition.