A dirty win, an odd take on 4-4-2, a sneaky elbow, blustery conditions – Notes on Huddersfield Town v Millwall

Huddersfield Town scrapped away in blustery conditions to knick a last-gasp winner against Millwall that they just about deserved on Saturday. It was an ugly, ugly game where neither team covered themselves in glory but Town applied the most pressure and in the 94th minute they achieved their reward when Matty Pearson’s excellent header was saved and Rhys Healey nodded in the loose ball. 

While Town’s Championship status is far from secure, if they do stay up, this will be the game we’ll look back on as the turning point where we went from likely relegation to having a chance of survival. Not only did Healey’s goal give us all three points, it also gave Town belief, momentum and some good feelings at just the right time in the season.

A dirty win – as promised 

Andre Breitenreiter talked in advance of this game about being happy to have a dirty win against Millwall and that’s exactly what he delivered. Personally, I would prefer a little bit more entertainment on a Saturday afternoon if this was a normal situation but with Town having their backs to the wall and desperately needing the points, it made perfect sense to throw aesthetics and crowd-pleasing out the window for this game and do whatever it took to get over the line.

The fact that the win only came in the dying moments of the game shouldn’t detract too much from the plan, I suppose, because Town were knocking at the door throughout the game and if you look at all the key stats for the game, Town were ahead: possession, shots, shots on target, xG, corners, big chances, etc. So, to the naked eye, this game looked like two desperately poor teams, slugging it out in awful conditions. I think Town managed to just about get the better of the wrestling match and were worthy winners, even if it was very late in the day that their reward came.

Keeping things tight and cagey seemed to be the tactic for the game but, really, at the moment I don’t think there’s much else on offer for Town. Whenever we try to play expansive and attractive football it tends to go wrong for us. So I think we might have to settle for six more outings of Andre’s Dirty Football between now and the end of the season. Because there’s no point trying to change everything in the middle of the relegation battle. 

Arguably, the whole reason we’re in this relegation battle is because we sacked Neil Warnock when he had Town playing well as a dour, counter-attacking team and brought Darren Moore in with a remit to make us an attacking team. Moore gave it a go for a while, but after a few heavy defeats, developed his own version of a safety-first approach which led to us drawing most of our games and being stuck at the bottom end of the table. 

At least with the way Breitenreiter is doing things, he is keeping attacking players on the field and giving them licence to put pressure on the back line of the opposition and we’re looking a threat. This system doesn’t have a lot of creativity but it does have attack-minded players that can put the ball away if they can force errors from the opposition’s defence.

Tempers flaring 

I think a real turning point for this game was the incident around 60 minutes into the game, where Sorba Thomas was repeatedly fouled and his reaction led to a scuffle on the pitch. The pushing and shoving that ensued was hardly a mass brawl but the cynical attempts by Millwall to get a rise out of the Town players in the minutes that followed seemed to have the reverse effect and injected some urgency into our play and we enjoyed our best play after this incident. I think the incident fired up a few of our players and got them energised for the rest of the game. 

In fairness, Brodie Spencer was very lucky to avoid a red card for an off-the-ball elbow that he threw at a Millwall player (Honeyman I think), particularly as the linesman reported it to the ref but the consequence only seemed to be a stern talking to. I was sat relatively close to the incident and the only saving grace for the Town youngster was that his execution was poor but otherwise, his intention was there to whack the Millwall player in the head. Thankfully he got away with it though and was able to complete another very accomplished performance for Town. 

Sorba Thomas seemed to have a few minutes where he had the red mist descend on him too and just about managed to stay on the right side of the line. One more incident going against him could easily have set him off and seen him picking up another yellow and being sent off again. 

Relegation battles need passion and players willing to fight with everything,but I do worry that indiscipline could have cost us again in this match as it has recently against Leeds and Rotherham. Finding a way to channel and use aggression without letting it spill over will be important over the next few games.

A strange take on four-four-two

I know not everyone loves talking about formations but I found the way that Town lined up for this game quite interesting, as rather than replacing Rudoni with a straight swap of Ben Wiles or Brahima Diarra an extra striker was put in the mix instead and we went for an old-fashioned 4-4-2 shape instead. Though, in reality, we played it more like a 4-2-4 system, with both Thomas and Koroma pushing right up to join the two strikers when we attacked. 

I think I can see what the game plan was for this game, because we didn’t have any creative midfielders that Breitenreiter wanted to start with, he decided not to pretty much bypass midfield altogether, so when we got the ball, Matos dropped back to support the defence, Kasumu drifted wide, the wingers pushed up and there was a huge gap in the middle of the park. 

Because we didn’t score until a very late set piece, it’s probably fair to say this unusual tactic didn’t really pay huge dividends but there were times when it did nearly pay off. A few times we managed to thread balls in behind the Millwall defence and because we had four forwards charging forward, they usually had a man over to find and exploit. Sadly, the execution was lacking when we did find those opportunities to break though. So I suppose the system might have been OK but the execution was the problem. 

Windy weather ruined the game

It’s unfair to talk about this game without mentioning the atrocious weather conditions. Even pouring coffee out of a flask into a cup was tricky at halftime, so trying to accurately kick a ball half the length of the pitch was never going to work. And it didn’t work, whenever either team went long the ball either went out for a throw, straight through to the keeper or was held up by the wind and blew back nearly all the way to the kicker. The strange blustery nature of the wind also meant nobody ever really became accustomed to it and adjusted because it kept changing.

It struck me as slightly odd that the teams still kicked long even when it yielded poor results in the conditions, but I suppose there must be tactical plans that they can’t deviate from even if they don’t seem to work. But the wind, Town’s tactics of going for an ugly win and Millwall’s own lack of confidence and ability contributed to one of the scrappiest and least appealing games I’ve seen in a long time. 

Neutrals will have been horrified by the standard of football on show and while the weather played a part in spoiling this game, I doubt either team would have been playing like Man City had the wind suddenly died down. 

This result needs to be a springboard

The celebration at the end of this game was superb but it’s important to make sure that we now take this victory as the start of a little run. We now have two away games which are tricky but not impossible to get points from. The good feeling from this victory will quickly ebb away if we follow it up with back-to-back defeats before our next home games.

Preston and Bristol City away are not easy but we go into those games out of the relegation zone and with the chance to put some daylight between ourselves and the teams below us. While the home games against Swansea and Birmingham are probably the easier opportunities to pick up the points we need to survive, it would be lovely to do what we need to do early and not have the usual nail-biting end to the season. Though that wouldn’t be the Town way.