Danny Cowley seemed to take aim at Huddersfield Town chairman Phil Hodgkinson after being unveiled as the new Portsmouth manager.

Cowley and his brother Nicky have arrived on the south coast to try and guide Pompey into the Championship, and got off to a great start yesterday with a 2-1 victory over fellow play-off contenders Ipswich Town.

The duo are looking to get Portsmouth to a division which they haven't been in since 2013, and the second tier is a level that the Cowley's were managing in last season.

Huddersfield Town took the brothers from Lincoln City after a successful three years at Sincil Bank, and whilst Huddersfield were battling with relegation for most of the season, Cowley ended up keeping the Terriers in the Championship.

Surprisingly though just a few days before the end of the season, the Cowley's departed the West Yorkshire club, with Hodgkinson saying that the two parties shared 'different visions' for the club going forward.

The Scottish Sun believed that Hodgkinson wanted total control over transfers and that was something that Cowley wasn't willing to agree to, so he departed an in came Leeds under-23 coach Carlos Corberan.

 

 

 

 

The Terriers have remained in the bottom third of the Championship and Cowley has bided his time for his next role, and when speaking about why the deal took so long to finalise, Cowley spoke about chairman Michael Eisner and CEO Mark Catlin in high regard, and mentioned that he'd worked with good owners in the past - but there was one glaring omission in the form of Hodgkinson.

"We met the owners which was fantastic and literally, off the back of meeting the guys, we met Michael (Eisner) and Eric (Eisner) and Andy, who is one of the directors, on a Zoom call," said Cowley, per HampshireLive.

"Mark (Catlin) has just been brilliant to this process and it is really hard to find good people in football.

"We have been really fortunate at Concord Rangers initially and then at Lincoln to have wonderful working relationships with our owners and the chairman, and when you can find really good people and you felt naturally that you had a synergy and a connection."

The Verdict

It's now pretty evident that Cowley didn't agree with his own sacking at Huddersfield last year, but he told Hodgkinson that he would prove him wrong and he's looking to do that with Portsmouth.

When you look at it eight months on, Huddersfield are in the exact same position and scenario and they could end up getting relegated if some of the bottom teams start to pick up form - not to mention Rotherham have three games in hand on them.

When the current season is finished, we may see that Cowley has played a masterstroke if Pompey get into the Championship, and even more so if Huddersfield end up falling into League One, but there's still a lot of football to play this season.