The past 18 months have been a harsh reality check for Huddersfield Town as their Premier League adventure quickly went south.

While David Wagner did an incredible job keeping the Terriers in the top flight for a season, the speed with which their bid to remain in the division for a third season unravelled showed just how much he and his squad had overachieved. Three-quarters into their first season back in the Championship and this is even more evident.

The budget at Huddersfield has always been small in comparison to some of the Championship's biggest club and therefore long-term survival in the Premier League was unlikely.

With the now Norwich City director of football Stuart Webber at the helm, the club decided not to over-stretch themselves financially and instead looked for value in the transfer market, signing young and unproven players from abroad.

This is is a model that has worked with Norwich since and it meant that a relegation from the Premier League would not prove overly costly. Instead the club club could regroup and sell valuable players on for profit, while ensuring they would not have to cope with a bloated, poorly motivated and overpaid squad in the Championship. When the Terriers earned survival in the 2017/18 season they did so with the smallest budget in the division and a smaller budget than Championship club Aston Villa.

However, the decision to appoint Jan Siewert, largely based on the fact he also worked at Borussia Dortmund, was ill-conceived and although the move for Danny Cowley looks have been a smart one, they still have a way to go before they are fully recovered. The German's summer signings have failed to make an impact and the mass exodus left the side lacking quality and experience.

Since his arrival, Cowley has managed to get the most out of valuable assets like Karlan Grant, while he has used the loan market well. But come the summer, the former Lincoln City boss is at risk of losing a number of the players that have impressed for him this term. Therefore, the manner in which the club rebuild in the summer is of vital importance.

Loanees Trevoh Chalobah, Emile Smith-Rowe, Jonas Lossl, Chris Willock, Andy King and Kamil Grabara have made 87 appearances between them this season, while Karlan Grant, who has 16 of their 45 league goals, is wanted by a series of Premier League and Championship clubs. Cowley may be able to re-sign some of these players for another season, but with 20 players also returning from loans elsewhere in the summer his squad will likely look entirely different come the start of next season.

Now mass turnover of this squad is not a bad thing as it is not a particularly talented or coherent group. They are currently just three points clear of the relegation zone and have managed just 11 wins from their 37 matches. The team is overly reliant on Grant for goals and many of its more experienced players have under-performed. With Cowley also forced to use a lot of loan players, the group is very young, with a smattering of older players like Christopher Schindler, Danny Simpson, Jonathan Hogg and Frazier Campbell the only real experience to speak of.

The added uncertainty created by the league's suspension makes this task even harder and with just a few months to work with Cowley will have to be ruthless in his decision making. Players need to come in but others must be shipped out and given the number of them currently on loan, Cowley will not have had the chance to work with a huge proportion of his squad. The 41-year-old in an excellent and very well-regarded coach, but the size of this undertaking cannot be under-estimated. So soon after being seen as one of the most efficiently run clubs in the country things have gone wrong and they will take more than one summer to rectify.