6 things I keep telling myself to try and feel less worried about Huddersfield Town

Yesterday’s defeat to Brentford was bad, not just in terms of the result (which was largely expected) but because it revealed the obvious shortcomings at Huddersfield Town right now.

I felt despondent about Town’s chances this season at the final whistle but have since been trying to gee myself up and feel a bit better about our prospects. I’m not sure it’s working but I thought I’d share my thoughts here anyway. Here are the things I say to myself to try and be a bit more positive.

We’re at the start of a project that will take time to bear fruit

Huddersfield Town weren’t immediately transformed under Wagner, Leeds weren’t under Bielsa and Liverpool weren’t under Klopp. Making a shift in philosophy takes time and can have a bumpy start. We’re probably going to need to be patient.

We’ve already seen multiple players injured since the new intensive training was brought in. Much of the squad Carlos inherited aren’t up to doing what he expects. The collective fitness we need in the squad to make this system work isn’t there yet either. The tactical system means players are relearning how to play their positions and their movements on the pitch aren’t natural yet.

All of these things will get better, more time on the training pitch will improve the fitness levels and therefore the resilience to muscle injuries. We’ll look better when our new signings have adjusted to the style of play we want (including the signings we’ve not yet made). The whole squad will also get better as they become more familiar with what Corberán wants from them.

There are already signs that the high intensity pressing is working for Town defensively, at least for spells. The possession based attacking side of things isn’t bearing fruit just yet but that was always likely to take time, particularly with a squad low on creativity and confidence.

New signings will improve the team

While I’ve been grumbling about Town’s lack of transfer market activity this window, the signings we’ve made so far seem like they should be quite good. They all fit the new system, fill the biggest gaps in the squad and have potential to do well (on paper at least).

If we can bring in another three or four players before the window shuts then we might be a completely different prospect. A winger, a striker and an attacking midfielder that can all go straight into the starting eleven would mean we’re far less reliant on players that are terribly out of form or academy lads.

Obviously we should have had all our business done before the season started but other clubs have the exact same problem. I think having the deadline pushed back to October hasn’t helped because, like nearly every person that has ever had homework, clubs always leave things until the deadline approaches regardless of when it falls.

Had the deadline been the night before the season started it would have meant the transfer window would have been rushed due to the short turnaround time but this longer window has just meant more faffing about and tedious transfer sagas.

The fitness will keep getting better

I’ve already touched on fitness above but I wanted to talk about it in more detail. Town ran a lot yesterday and the pressing helped to restrict Brentford for the first hour. When Leeds use this system they run that way for the full 90 minutes and don’t give their opponents chance to settle.

Town couldn’t last the full game yesterday and the final half an hour saw the press fade away as tired legs crept in. It only works if the whole team pushes on to their man and too many Town players failed to track their man, so Brentford dominated us and exploited gaps.

This can only get better. The players talk about training like they’ve survived an ordeal, particularly the murderball sessions, so there’s bound to be a period of adjustment. Once that fitness has built up we’ll be the ones able to score late in games after we’ve run the opposition into the ground.

We expected a tough start

When the fixtures came out we knew these opening two games would be gruellers. Few Town fans expected points from these encounters and losing to the likes of Norwich and Brentford won’t define our season. It’s how we fare against the bottom half of the table that will matter.

What we’re capable of against weaker opposition is still relatively unknown. Obviously we struggled against Rochdale but that was effectively another preseason game.

Forest are another tough opponent next Friday, though possibly not quite as well organised as Brentford and without the squad depth of Norwich. It will be hard but possibly not as hard as our opening pair of games.

The really interesting game will be a week on Saturday when we face Rotherham. That will give us a sense of how our team compares to a team we’re likely to be fighting it out with at the bottom end of the table this season. It could go either way.

Big moments haven’t gone our way in the first two games

Bad luck tends to level out over the course of a season but Town have had a bit of misfortune in their first two games. Yesterday Nørgaard could easily have been sent off for stamping on Bacuna’s shin but wasn’t. Then Bacuna was also involved in another key moment when his powerful header bounced over the post and wide instead of in, denying Town an equaliser. Either of those things could have gone in Town’s favour and completely changed the complexion of the game.

A similar situation occurred in the Norwich game when Cantwell elbowed Stearman in the face, right in front of the ref and received a yellow card when many would have sent him off. The fact that Stearman, still most likely seeing stars from the elbow, made the mistake that led to the goal makes the failure to send of Cantwell all the more galling.

I don’t like whining about decisions too much because it’s lazy to blame officials rather than look at your own shortcomings. Particularly when we could have had two penalties awarded against us in the Norwich game.

The point I’m making is that these games could have swung in dramatically different directions if things had played out slightly differently. In time we’ll have games where we do get lucky and that could be what we need to build confidence and start accumulating points.

There are a few positives we can pick from these two opening defeats

Not many, if I’m honest, but there are some bright moments from the last two games. I’ll run through them in bullet points:

• Ben Jackson and Romoney Crichlow have both got some minutes on the pitch at Championship level. Crichlow looks more ready than Jackson but neither embarrassed themselves.
• We restricted Norwich to very few chances and looked defensively solid. Less so in the Brentford game but it still took them an hour to score their first goal (I know they should have had a hatful before that but I’m trying to stay chipper).
• Carlos spent most of both games berating his players. I know this doesn’t sound like a positive but it shows he knows what he wants to see and isn’t getting it out of the players at the moment. This suggests performances will improve when the players carry out instructions. If he was leaning on the dugout and happy with what he saw then that would suggest it was the plan that wasn’t working.
• The biggest issues are hopefully temporary problems. Lack of strikers, non-existent midfield, poorly organised defence can all quickly turned around if things go our way.

Do you feel better after reading this? Me neither.

Despite all the above points making sense, it’s hard to get over how poor Town are at the moment and how little reason we have to trust the board to make the right moves in the transfer market. The mood can soon turn around with some decent signings and some points on the board but until these things happen it’s hard to be positive about Town’s chances.

Pop a comment below if you can think of any other reason we can feel positive right now.

Want to read more?

Read my player ratings for the Brentford game.

Or check out my rant about all the things that went wrong in the Brentford game.