In 20 years of employment with the West Yorkshire club, Murphy has seen the front and back of more managers than the average LMA conference, and November 4 brought a repeat of a cycle which the Irishman knows too well.

Early that morning, Huddersfield announced a parting of ways with Stan Ternent and the end of a managerial experiment which failed to produce the anticipated results. Murphy digested the news and waited for his phone to ring.

Huddersfield's director of football development had been their first port of call after Peter Jackson's departure in 2007 and again when Andy Ritchie was sacked late last season, and it was an automatic response for the club to appoint him as caretaker manager while the dust thrown up by Ternent's reign settled.

A man held in high esteem at the Galpharm Stadium – though one with apparently no interest in leaving his academy position for the more volatile environment of professional management – Murphy's influence had a profound effect on Huddersfield's first team last season.

His six matches as caretaker brought two draws and four victories, one achieved against Leeds United on a wet night at the Galpharm Stadium, but, as Murphy admits, there is more at stake for the club third time around. When Jackson and Ritchie moved on, Huddersfield were trailing towards a mid-table finish; after 15 matches of this season, the club have some distance to travel before they can feel the same security.

Murphy will enjoy his moment of personal exposure when he leads the operation in the visiting dug-out at Elland Road tomorrow, but his long-term view of a club who hold 16th position in their division is pensive.

"This is a very important period for the club," he said. "It's important in the sense that a run of steady results is overdue, and if the club don't put that run together then we're going to have a problem.

"It's a delight for me to be taking the team at Elland Road but I won't be properly happy until we've got a manager in place who's going to be here for the long term and who can get us moving forward.

"It sounds strange because Leeds United have had very little stability in the last six or seven years, but we probably need what they've got now – a stable management team who are doing a fantastic job. They made a tremendous appointment when they got Gary McAllister. He's a high calibre manager and he knows football inside out. The same goes for his staff.

"I've been caretaker twice before but this is a different situation for me and probably more difficult. Last season, the team I took on contained a lot of the kids I'd worked with in the academy, but Stan signed quite a few players in the summer and most of them don't know me at all. I accepted straight away that it was going to be a little complicated.

"There are players in the dressing room who will have been sad to see Stan go.