Derby County will enter into the Championship knowing there's a harmonious blend of youth and experience in their ranks, which made Paul Warne's men such a tough team to beat in League One across the regular season.
Alongside homegrown talents such as Eiran Cashin and Louie Sibley, the Rams have a wealth of seasoned professionals who have been there and done that in the league above in the form of Sonny Bradley, James Collins and Nathaniel Mendez-Laing with the first name in that trio tasting promotion up to the Premier League with Luton Town.
Warne will hope none of the young stars at his disposal will move on in the summer to disrupt this harmony though, having been stung in the transfer market previously when selling on this former Academy star in 2005.
Tom Huddlestone's first spell at Derby
Returning older and wiser 12 years on from his original spell at Pride Park in 2017, having reached the heady heights of Premier League football, Huddlestone's best years were largely spent away from his boyhood club.
Formerly on the books of Derby's arch-rivals in Nottingham Forest during his youth days, it would be with the Rams where Huddlestone would first start to put the wheels in motion to go on and have an established career in the top flight.
Before his major move to Tottenham Hotspur transpired, Huddlestone impressed in Derbyshire playing in the Championship with three assists picked up from 93 games having initially arrived as a teenager.
These promising numbers playing for the Rams must have caught the attention of Spurs, who signed the now 37-year-old midfielder for a fee in the region of £2.5m.
Derby would be left filled with regret signing off on this deal when looking at how well their former youth player would take to the demands of the Premier League, becoming a key cog in many Spurs teams with 16 goals and 31 assists registered from 209 contests.
Casting an eye over at TotallyMoney's Transfer Index, Derby would have pocketed far more money for their young starlet if the same deal went through in today's inflated market. Perhaps it wasn't such a bad move after all?
Totally Money have taken the 100 most expensive transfers of all time across each season since 1992 in Europe's top five leagues. Armed with plenty of historical financial data they have calculated what footballers of yesteryear would be worth in the present day after taking into account the remarkable rate of inflation.
Tom Huddlestone's transfer value in 2024
Using the Transfer Index, Derby would be laughing now by raking in a far higher £16.4m which would make Huddlestone the most expensive sale in Rams' history by some distance.
Warne and Co will hope, if they do have to part ways with the likes of Cashin this summer – who has had previous interest from Premier League suitors – that they get a hefty price for him like the £16.4m being bandied around next to Huddlestone's name.
1. Matej Vydra
£10.5m
2. Jeff Hendrick
£10.1m
3. Seth Johnson
£9.9m
4. Will Hughes
£7.8m
5. Tom Ince
£7.8m
Sourced by Transfermarkt
Derby will just be glad that they managed to persuade Huddlestone to return to Pride Park during the latter years of his extensive career, finally managing to break his Rams goalscoring duck in the process as well against Brentford after 125 games tallied up in a Derby shirt.
The likes of Max Bird, who has starred in the centre of the park after making the grade stepping up from youth football, could do far worse than to model their game on Huddlestone's who never ended up looking back when first exiting Pride Park in the mid-noughties.
Derby won't be consumed with dread about losing more of their homegrown gems just yet, however, still savouring the feeling of promotion whilst they can before the nitty and gritty of next campaign becomes more real.
