Huddersfield have found an answer to competing in the Championship with a smaller budget than almost everybody else by looking to Germany, and maverick coach David Wagner.

Newcastle's fisting of Queens Park Rangers on Tuesday evening was exactly the sort of result the lesser lights of the Championship will have been fearing over the summer as the division shaped up as tough as it's ever been.

Two clubs of the size of Newcastle and Aston Villa, with their spending power completely distorting the transfer market at this level; Norwich City bringing the same team and manager that got them promoted from this league 12 months ago back with them; Sheffield Wednesday and Brighton making eye-catching signings on top of already strong sides; big clubs like Leeds with Garry Monk and Derby with Nigel Pearson finally looking like getting their act together after several years of mismanagement… this was to be a tough year for the middle of the road sides just to keep their heads above the water.

And, to some extent, that has transpired in the opening six weeks. QPR drowned against Newcastle during the week, and the Magpies will surely win the league at a canter this season as predicted, barring a colossal injury crisis (unlikely) or epic meltdown (don't put that past them). Aston Villa's early struggles aren't altogether surprising given the state they came down in and the mental geezer who's taken over them. Likewise Leeds, who will never go anywhere under their current owner. And even Derby, with the manager everybody wanted after the job he did at Leicester, are showing no signs of shrugging off their chokers tag and we perhaps shouldn't be too surprised at that either.

Newcastle, Brighton and Norwich, however, are shaping up as expected.

But wait just a conclusion jumping moment here, who's this occupying two of the top three spots in the division? Huddersfield Town and newly promoted Barnsley? That wasn't in anybody's script at all. Even if it's not sustained — and you'd be a brave man to back them both to still be there come May — it's worth examining exactly how and why it's happened, and then in the match preview we'll explain why it's bad news for Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, Les Ferdinand and QPR.

Huddersfield were a League One side as recently as 2012 when Alex Smithies was the hero of their penalty shoot out victory against Sheffield United in the play-off final. They'd been at that level since 2004 and were actually in League Two before that after a dramatic fall from their last stint in the second tier.

This is a club with no recent top-flight experience, which of course means no parachute payments in a division where seven clubs are still receiving handouts from the Premier League in one form or another. It's a club that worked its way through several regular Championship managerial faces — Chris Powell, Mark Robins, Simon Grayson, Lee Clark — while never looking capable of doing anything much more than treading water. Their four final place finishes of nineteenth, sixteenth, seventeenth and nineteenth since returning to this level tell a clear story or a club that can just about survive at this level barring any major injury crises.

It's also a club that has repeatedly been forced to sell its supposed best players. Joel Lynch (QPR, £1m), Alex Smithies (QPR, £1.5m), Conor Coady (Wolves £2m), Jacob Butterfield (Derby, £4mish), Adam Clayton (Middlesbrough, part ex), Oliver Norwood (Reading, £1.2m), Lee Peltier (Cardiff, £850k), Jack Hunt (Palace, £2m), Scott Arfield (Burnley, free), Jordan Rhodes (Blackburn, £8m) and Anthony Pilkington (Norwich, £2m) have all left Huddersfield in the last five years representing a significant talent drain.

You'll notice that two of those players came to Loftus Road — even the new QPR, cutting its cloth accordingly, spending more sensibly, talking about being unable to compete with the big boys in this division, can still offer better money and the lights of London to draw players from Huddersfield.

And yet there are Huddersfield at the top of the league, helped along the way by a 2-1 win at Newcastle who subsequently won 6-0 at Loftus Road.

A big part of the reason for this seems to be the arrival of David Wagner as head coach midway through last season following the departure of Powell. Wagner was the coach of Borussia Dortmund's second team, so came with all the usual Jurgen Klopp associations and recommendations that play so well in this country. But his appointment, at a lower end Championship club, was about as left field as they come. Wagner, a former USA international as a player randomly, had only previously coached the academy side at Hoffenheim, and was persuaded to join Klopp at Dortmund after 18 months in teacher training.

We've seen big swings like this taken by Championship chairmen before and they rarely work out. Huddersfield made 14 weird and wonderful signings this summer which were, deep breath: Christopher Schindler (German, 1860 Munich, £1.8m), Chris Lowe (German, Kaiserslauten, free), Michael Hefele (German, Dynamo Dresden, free), Jon Gorenc-Stankovic (Slovenian, Dortmund, undisclosed), Tareiq Holmes-Dennis (English, Charlton, undisclosed), Danny Ward (English, Liverpool, loan), Aaron Mooy (Australian, Man City, loan), Kasey Palmer (English, Chelsea, loan), Elias Kachunga (German, Ingolstadt, loan), Jack Payne (English, Southend, free), Ivan Paurevic (Croatian, FC Ufa, undisclosed), Joel Coleman (English, Oldham, undisclosed), Luke Coddington (English, Middlesbrough, free) and Rajiv van La Parra (Dutch, Wolves, free).

The mind wandered back to Gary Waddock's lone summer in charge of QPR. An inexperienced boss with a background in youth and reserve football but big ideas about now football should be played, handed his first number one job and charged with whipping a squad containing Monday Oliseh, Adam Czerkas, Ugo Ukah, Armel Tchakounte, Nick Ward, Damion Stewart, Zesh Rehman and Dexter Blackstock into shape. Waddock, who's had good spells and bad spells in charge of several lower league sides since, was out of a njob before the end of September and the worst QPR team in living memory only survived courtesy of several more conventional loan deals done by his replacement John Gregory.

When Huddersfield lost their last two games of last season 4-0 at Bristol City and 5-1 at home to Brentford to make it one win from their final six fixtures, this odd little experiment was starting to look a little ominous. It's been five years since Huddersfield managed to start and finish a season with the same manager.

Wagner, Klopp style, took his team to Sweden on a camping trip to start the pre-season — one of those catch your own dinner affairs with the players paired off and told to fend for themselves. Crucial when bedding in 14 new signings of different nationalities, many coming to England to play for the first time.

They play the high-energy, high-press football that Klopp preached in Dortmund. The double training sessions are present, timed to coincide with the kick off of the next match. Wagner says he feared resistance from the squad's experienced players but when they realised it was helping them win they bought into his methods completely. Huddersfield have a full time nutritionist for the first time, and a head of performance services whatever that may be. All players must live within 15 miles of the training ground as long commutes hamper recovery from injury.

Crucially, they fear nobody and they attack. They're quick, fit, good to watch. They've already played both the supposed giants of this division away and taken four points from St James' Park and Aston Villa.

Wagner told the Guardian: "We now call it the Terriers’ identity. Exactly the style of football I love is like a terrier. We are not the biggest dog, we are small, but we are aggressive, we are not afraid, we like to compete with the big dogs and we are quick and mobile and we have endurance. We never give up. This small dog has fighting spirit for sure.

“The main part of the style here is exactly what we had in Dortmund. We have had to adapt some things to the English environment. For example, referees here do not blow their whistles as much so there are fewer breaks in the game and players get more tired around 70 minutes. Maybe sometimes we have to keep the ball more rather than go for another goal even if you might then concede an equaliser.”

The club has sold a record number of season tickets — 15,000 — coinciding with prices being slashed to boost attendances and support for the team.

The question for Huddersfield now is just how far can this little dog go? The question for everybody else, particularly QPR, is how have they even got this far?

Links >>> Official website >>> Huddersfield Examiner, local paper >>> Yorkshire Evening Post, local paper >>> Down at the Mac — Message Board >>> Thrice Champions — Blog and podcast

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TacticalR added 23:01 - Sep 16 Thanks for your oppo profile. It all sounds good, and hope it works out for Huddersfield. However, there are some question marks raised by Raymond Verheijen over pure fitness training, which can leave players fit but not fresh. We've also seen teams like Bielsa's Marseilles and Pochettino's Tottenham burn out before the end of the season. Having said that, by reducing the commute time of the players the club has shown it takes injuries seriously.

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