5 big talking points ahead of Huddersfield Town’s game against Bristol City

I’m back! Apologies for my unannounced break. After a hiatus in November to work on a novel, I’m now writing about Town again. I’m now back to regular and potentially even more frequent service. So it’s going to be the action on the football pitch creating the drama, Huddersfield Town as the protagonists, the plot twists coming from the goals and the referees most likely being the villains. 

Over the next few weeks I’m going to be experimenting with a few new article formats using a similar principle to throwing mud at the wall and seeing what sticks. So in advance of tomorrow’s game against Bristol City, I thought it might be interesting to look at what big talking points there are ahead of this game, from a Town perspective. Feel free to chip in with your comments below.

Will Town be able to dominate possession against a weaker opponent?

Our recent run of games against Southampton, Sunderland and Swansea has seen us not just playing teams beginning with the letter S but also coming up against teams that like to keep hold of the ball and tap it about more than your typical Championship side. Darren Moore has instructed his Town team to allow this to happen, to a certain extent, providing it happens in areas of the pitch where it doesn’t hurt us and Town keep their defensive shape. 

For the stats-hungry readers out there, Bristol are 15th in the league in terms of average possession, with just 47.8% possession over the course of this season. Southampton are the top, with 64.5%, Sunderland third with 59.3 and Swansea 10th with 52.7%. And, you might be surprised to read that Town actually aren’t the worst in the league for average possession. That’s Rotherham, with 35.6% but we are second from bottom with 37.3%. Which perhaps explains why it’s felt dismal to watch Town at times this season, despite the fact we’re only a couple of wins away from being nestled in midtable.

Town’s average possession has been pulled down by their recent run of games, where we’ve had 23% against Swansea, 24% against Sunderland and 22% against Southampton. To have emerged from those three games without defeat is miraculous but it’s a type of football that isn’t sustainable in the long-term as we’ve basically approached them like FA Cup minnows up against a team many leagues up the pyramid. Against Bristol City, with home advantage, surely we should not be going into the game with that same conservative approach? 

Will Town try to play a bit more football or stick to what’s been working?

My next talking point, flows on from the above point about possession really, should Town look to play a bit more football in this game or should they stick with the approach of keeping things tight and playing on the counter? The Leeds and Cardiff games are still recent memories and the improvements that Town have made in their results since then have all been built around a solid defensive base (whenever anyone talks about “defensive bases” I immediately start thinking about biscuit bases and want a cheesecake) so switching to a more expansive style may be tricky. 

My concern is that the personnel available at the moment is suited to the brutal, attritional football that we’ve been playing lately and opening up to nicer, prettier football may not play to their strengths and has the possibility of making us vulnerable to soft goals. Not to mention the fact that our attacking strengths seem to mostly come from counter-attacking, set pieces and capitalising on errors. Do we have the players in our squad that can play a more free-flowing, attacking type of football? 

I think there’s a strength that comes in knowing what you are, being able to play to your strengths and maximise your positives while covering up your biggest flaws. (It was my basic approach to securing romantic partners prior to settling down with Mrs TerrierSpirit.) So I wonder if it may be a bit too risky to completely throw out the system that has been delivering (modest) results these last few weeks.

My preference would be for a modified version of the style Town have been playing. The same basic shape, similar lineup of players but try to push everyone a bit further up the field, keep the ball better in our opponent’s half and try to create more chances in open play. A gradual shift in tactics over time to something more attacking will give us more threat in games hopefully but still keep that defensive (biscuity) base.

Can Darren Moore win over the Town fans?

When Darren Moore was first announced as Huddersfield Town’s new manager, I went online and had a look at what fans thought of him at the previous clubs he has managed. There was almost universal love for him from Wednesday, Derby and Doncaster fans. Not all of them liked his tactics or results that he achieved as their manager but I don’t think I saw a single criticism of him as a person. In fact, the universal affection for him seemed almost odd given that football fans are typically such a prickly and fickle bunch. But, you have to say that Darren Moore is a very well-liked man. But that hasn’t happened for him yet at Town.

While social media can be a poor barometer for public opinion, because it tends to only promote the most extreme opinions, Town fans online are either unsure or not keen on Darren Moore at this point in his Town tenure. Admittedly he’s had a mediocre, at best, start to his time at Town, with just two wins in his first 12 games. However, he has only lost four and drawn the other six, so he’s still hitting the magic one-point-a-game ratio. Given he’s achieved this through his initial bedding-in period and following that, a rotten run of injuries, I think the lack of love for Moore is a little harsh.

Perhaps some of those frosty feelings towards Darren Moore are starting to thaw a little after this recent upturn in results as Town are currently unbeaten in three. However, I get the feeling that there is a fairly significant section of Town fans that remain unconvinced about him. These are the ones that go quiet when we’re doing OK but sharpen their knives the second results turn. 

So it will be interesting to gauge the general mood in the stadium towards Darren Moore, to see if he’s starting to win over those that sit in between the happy clappers and the miserablists. If he’s doing enough to keep the bulk of fans on side then that goes a long way to keeping him in a job. When popular opinion turns against managers, it can become very difficult for owners to keep faith. 

For what it’s worth, I still don’t know about Darren Moore. The results so far are about what you would expect from the team we have. His hands are tied in terms of not being able to implement the style of football he wants because he doesn’t have the players available to do it. So it’s probably going to be hard to know if he’s the right man for the job until he’s had a good run with a squad that he’s had a bit of time to mould in his image. Though, thinking about it, if that means needing a couple of transfer windows and a preseason, plus a bit of time to bed in a philosophy it could be this time next year before he’s had the right amount of time to properly get his feet under the table. When do managers ever get that kind of time in football? 

So, I think he has to be a pragmatist for the short term, get the results he needs to stay in a job long enough to be able to build the team that will get him to where he wants to be long term. Then we’ll see if he actually does have an idea about what he wants to do.

My worry is that Carlos and Wagner had already made it pretty clear what they wanted to do by this stage in their time at Town and right now Darren Moore is still treading water and trying to cling on to points by cutting and pasting Neil Warnock’s tactics. It would be disappointing to wait around for the time when he finally gets to implement his grand vision of the football he wants to play to then discover he doesn’t have many great ideas anyway.

Do we have enough fit players to have selection problems?

Switching gears a bit and thinking of more immediate issues, it will be interesting to see what players Darren Moore has available for tomorrow’s game. Don’t bother listening to his press conference for any clues on this, as Moore gives nothing away. Or if he does, it’s usually a red herring and shouldn’t be relied upon. 

However, the injury situation is slowly improving for Town, with more and more senior players being available for selection. While new players are picking up injuries too and that can be a concern with the hectic fixture list we’re currently entering into. But on the whole, it now looks like we almost have enough grown ups in the squad to fill the bench (with a sprinkling of youngsters to bulk it up, a bit like you put lentils into soup to pad it out).

If we have a few more players returning from injury it’s possible that Darren Moore could start to have genuine selection issues rather than his recent problem of trying to pick a team of eleven players that can hold their own in a Championship game. For example, if Ben Wiles has returned to training and is available for selection then he will have to decide whether to drop Hogg or Kasumu to make way for him or to switch to a three-man midfield and change the shape to accommodate him. Add Rudoni into the mix and Moore is genuinely spoilt for choice.

These are the nice sort of problems we’ve not had for quite a long time at Town and hopefully we’ll soon have enough players to not suffer the embarrassment of not being able to name a full complement of substitutes and scratching together teams with four or five players out of position. 

Will Bristol sack their manager after this game?

With Tony Mowbray getting the boot from Sunderland and Michael Duff getting sacked by Swansea, Town currently have a sort of Championship grim reaper status where their recent opponents have happened to sack their manager shortly after playing us. I have to say, this makes a refreshing change, as it feels like we always play teams just after they’ve sacked their manager and are enjoying the bounce that comes with getting rid of an unpopular boss.

Liam Manning should be fairly safe in his job at Bristol City in fairness, as they’ve only recently appointed him as a replacement to Nigel Pearson. While they’ve lost their last two games, to Nowrich and Southampton, Manning is still in his Honeymoon period so this unusual run of sackings is not likely to continue following this game.

All of these sackings makes me wonder if it’s worth it. The constant chopping and changing. Lurching from one manager to the next, one philosophy to the next and expecting a different man to get better results, from the same resources.  Sometimes it works, I suppose. Nobody has said Mark Fotheringham should have been given more time. But that was a rare situation,  where we upgraded a complete amateur to one of the all-time greats of the game. I’m dubious about the wisdom of frequent manager changes when the improvement is less obvious. So, calling back to my earlier section, where I asked myself what I thought of Darren Moore, I think he needs time and patience and I’ll try to keep an open mind despite my early concerns because I’m sick of constantly changing managers.

A (sort of) new way to keep up to date with Town

Since my last article, there have been big changes at The Examiner and they no longer have a dedicated Huddersfield Town reporter. This is a bad decision and a real shame, but thankfully Steven Chicken is still going to carry on covering Huddersfield Town after being made redundant, under the new title of We Are Terriers.

He’s had to switch to a subscription-based model to make it work, so access to this new platform costs £5 a month and includes regular podcasts and in-depth articles. However, you can sign up for a free membership and get just the player ratings article after every game.

One very nice perk is that it all comes ad-free, which I’d so much nicer than the Yorkshire Live reading experience, which feels a bit like they’re actively trying their best to stop you reading their articles with the wide variety of autoplaying videos, pop up, slide out and fullscreen ads. Though I appreciate I’m writing this criticism on my own ad supported site so am a complete hypocrite but as I have no plans to start charging, I’m afraid my ads need to stay.

Click here to sign up to We Are Terriers on Substack. I have, and found it easy to navigate and use. The only warning I would give is that the bank transaction goes through as “Steven Chicken £5”. So anyone who has their bank scrutinised may have some awkward questions about why they are sending a man/chicken money. Thankfully my wife is understanding and sees my Town interest and the related expense as a sort of mild illness that needs support and sympathy.