Owens Joins Chesterfield in £3.6m Deal

The paperwork was done on 12 July, but the moment that mattered came at the Chesterfield end of the deal: a defender who spent three seasons at Huddersfield Town walking into a squad that already has three of his old teammates in it.

Mick Owens, 28, joins Chesterfield for £3.6m. That is the most the club has ever paid for a player, and everyone in the building knows it. No add-ons dressed up as ambition. A straight fee for a centre-back who has spent his career keeping the ball out of his own net rather than putting it in anyone else's.

Huddersfield get the money. Chesterfield get the player. Owens gets a change of dressing room that will feel oddly familiar: Ynyr Walford and Ryan Pugh are already there, both former Huddersfield men. Anthony Devine went the other way years ago, from Chesterfield to Huddersfield, and is still at the club that has just sold Owens.

Owens made 135 appearances for Huddersfield across three seasons and did not score once. He has 242 club games behind him across seven clubs. A defender's defender, then, and Chesterfield have paid a club-record fee for exactly that.

"It's a big number for this club," Owens said. "I know what it means. I'm here to defend, not to decorate."

Chesterfield finished last season in the Championship, as did Huddersfield. The fee is the story: a second-tier club breaking its own ceiling for a player who turns 29 this year, in a market where defenders of his experience are not cheap and never have been.

Walford, who played 78 games for Huddersfield before moving to Chesterfield, will have a familiar face beside him. So will Pugh, 39 games for the Terriers. The old-boy network runs both ways, and this summer it runs through Chesterfield's chequebook.

For a club with 12 major titles to its name, the £3.6m is the sort of money that demands a return. Owens has never been a scorer. Chesterfield have not bought him to start now.