Huddersfield Town play their only home friendly of this preseason tonight, when they play Olympique Lyonnais at the John Smith’s Stadium. It’s a chance to watch Town take on Champions League quality opposition, which should be an interesting test, but means it may be tricky for Town to turn around the poor form we’ve experienced this preseason.
Here are a few questions fans can hope to have answered after today’s game.
Are we going to see our best XI start the game?
The friendlies in the early stages of preseason are mostly aimed at raising fitness levels and the team selections are based around getting all the squad’s players to get a chance to play. It’s a bit like the way an under-8s football team is picked.
Now the majority of the squad have played 90 minutes it may be the focus switches towards trying to find our best starting XI. This would mean Mooy being brought in to play alongside Hogg, and Sohbi and Diakhaby being given a chance to stake their claim on a starting position. I’d also like to see Kongolo and Schindler paired in central defence, while Zanka gets up to speed following his post-World Cup break.
Can we improve our recent form in friendlies?
Like any sensible football fan, I know not to be worried about losing preseason friendlies. But I’d like to see Town win a couple to give our confidence a boost and to get our attacking players on the scoresheet.
As I mentioned above, I’m hopeful that we’ll field close to a full-strength starting team and that will give us a chance of putting in a decent performance. The result is hard to predict but it’s more important that we can see signs of the team starting to gel and evidence that our players are nearly ready for the season to start.
Could Sabiri play his way into contention this season?
One of the success stories of preseason so far has been the form of Abdelhamid Sabiri, who’s looked one of our brightest players. He’s been deployed as a deep-lying midfielder, instead of his preferred number ten role, and adapted well to this new position.
It’s hard to get too excited by friendlies, but his composure on the ball and work-rate off it have made me think he could force his way into David Wagner’s plans for the forthcoming season. Last season didn’t got to plan for Sabiri and he was on the fringes of the squad, but it’s possible that he could have more of a part to play in Town’s second season in the Premier League.
Is Kachunga being moved to play behind the striker?
Elias Kachunga has been played as a number ten in all the preseason games he’s featured in so far. While he was brought to Town as a striker, he’s played the bulk of his games for us out on the right-wing.
Even with Tom Ince’s recent departure to Stoke, Town have more right-wingers than the Daily Mail comments section, so it does make sense to repurpose Kachunga to play more centrally. Given David Wagner has never really fancied Sabiri in the number ten role, Alex Pritchard doesn’t have a lot of competition for that spot now Ince has left.
Kachunga has great positional awareness, and an ability to ghost into the box at the right time, so he could potentially be great in this role. Whether he’s got the close control to operate in tight spaces is something I’m less sure about, but I can see him providing a good alternative to Pritchard in this area.
Will David Wagner stick with 4-2-3-1?
So far the team have played the typical 4-2-3-1 system in preseason, but David Wagner showed a preference for playing three centre backs towards the end of last season. I suspect we’ll play with an extra central defender in games against top-six opposition but the more adventurous 4-2-3-1 when we’re playing the teams around us in the table.
Lyon represent our toughest test so far this preseason, so this is the ideal opportunity to experiment with formations that might work against top-class teams. It might be a good idea for us to experiment when there are no Premier League points on the line.
Excellent balanced article – as always