Birmingham City attacker Alfie May is set to join League One side Huddersfield Town after the Terriers agreed a £1.2 million deal for the 32-year-old, as per Football League World.
Why Do Huddersfield Town Want May?
The Yorkshire giants started an ambitious project last summer as they looked to bounce back into the Championship at the first time of asking.
However, Michael Duff’s side majorly struggled in front of goal, which led to them finishing in a relatively lowly 10th place.
The Terriers scored just 1.4 goals per match, which made them the 14th-highest scorers in the second tier, and only one player, Josh Koroma, reached double figures for league goals.
Huddersfield’s underlying numbers in front of goal were slightly more promising as they created the ninth-most xG and the seventh-most big chances, perhaps indicating that they simply lacked raw quality in the final third.
Both Dion Charles, who was signed for around £770,000 in January, and Freddie Ladapo failed to find the net in league fixtures, whilst Joe Taylor only scored twice in 15 games.
This may have been slightly bemusing for the Huddersfield recruitment department. Charles scored more than once every three games on average before his move to the Accu Stadium, whilst Taylor had an excellent loan spell with Lincoln City in the second half of the 2023/24 campaign, scoring a very impressive 10 times in 19 games.
This is perhaps why they are looking to sign May, who has been even more prolific in recent years.
Last season, he finished the campaign as Birmingham’s second-highest scorer in the league despite not always being used from the start and sometimes being deployed on the left wing. He registered more combined goals and assists than any other Blues player, scoring 16 times and making eight assists in the third tier.
In the 23/24 season, he finished the campaign as League One’s top goalscorer, finding the back of the net 23 times in 43 league games and 27 times in 50 games in all competitions. In the two seasons before that, he scored 22 times in 46 games and 26 times in 53 games, a consistently excellent goalscoring record.
The Gravesend-born man looks to be surplus to requirements at St. Andrew’s following Birmingham’s big-money acquisition of former Celtic frontman Kyogo Furuhashi, who has an even more impressive goalscoring record than May.
Writer’s View
This is an excellent signing for Lee Grant’s side. There has been a lot of upheaval at the Accu Stadium over the summer, but the Terriers have come out of it with several high-quality additions.
May simply guarantees you goals in the third tier. There is no worry about him being a system player as he has now scored prolifically for three clubs.
It will be interesting to see if Grant integrates May, Charles and Taylor into the same team, or who he chooses to leave out.
