A kamikaze keeper, winning moments, Ashia bursts onto the scene and passing problems – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 2-0 win at Reading

Huddersfield Town kept their 100% win record on Saturday with a 2-0 win over Reading. The performance was not always fluent but the dedication and effort were consistent across the players involved. The scoreline hints at an easier victory than this game actually was but I think Town did enough to deserve all three points. 

Town now sit top of the embryonic league table and are showing signs of being a strong team this season. It’s very early days but all the current indicators point towards huge potential. There will be tougher tests ahead for Town this season but I’m really pleased with how well they’ve navigated their two tricky opening games. 

Here are some of my thoughts on this Reading win…

A tight game, decided by 3 moments

There are millions of variables that have an effect on the outcome of a game of football, the training building up to the game, the tactics, players’ personal lives, whether a pass goes where it should, a runner is tracked or a shot taken. But in this match, there were three key moments.

1. Burns misses a free header –  With the game still at 0-0, Finley Burns found himself on the edge of our six yard box with a free header that would have been a certain goal if he hadn’t glanced it wide. Questions need to be asked about our marking at corners but thankfully Burns fluffed his lines and we were let off the hook. Reading had other chances, obviously, but this was the one they should have scored that really had potential to swing the game in Reading’s favour and who knows what would have happened if we’d have conceded the first goal.
2. Whatmough opens his account at Town – While he’s not been prolific in recent years, Whatmough did well to connect with Miller’s excellent corner delivery, even if it wasn’t a clean connection and he had to poke the ball home with his toe to finish the job. There’s a lot of luck when loose balls drop in the box but I think desire counts in these situations too. There must be a reason that some teams never get lucky in these situations and others regularly get the rub of the green. This wasn’t a classy goal but they all count the same.
3. Cameron Ashia’s lovely volley – Reading were building pressure in the dying stages of the game and Town were doing everything they could to relieve it. Cameron Ashia then took the game away from Reading with a goal that we rarely see at Town. I don’t know much about the youngster from the Under 21 team but the way he shot on the volley with precision in a crowded box on his league debut suggests he’s got a good amount of talent. 

The game was tight and being sharp in both boxes was the difference between Town and Reading in the end. Reading didn’t make the most of their major chance, whereas Town converted two. Which, I suppose is a very obvious thing to say, that the team that took their chances won but the broader point I’m trying to make is that in a well matched game, we deserved to win because we firstly competed well enough to make it tight and then found the bit of quality we needed to get the result over the line. Interestingly, that was a key feature of Carlos Corberan’s time at Town, putting together a series of narrow victories in tight games. I wonder if we’ll see this become a pattern again under Lee Grant. 

Passing was good but in the wrong half

One of the things I liked most about Town’s performance in this game was how we managed to hold the ball pretty well at times and passed it around nicely. The intricate short passing took a lot of bravery with Reading pressing high but on the whole we managed fairly well to avoid getting caught in possession. 

The problem was that too much of this possession was stuck in our own half and the only way we made progress up the field was by booting it over the top. So the pretty patterns and intricate play we needed to fend off Reading’s advances was more likely to benefit them than us, as a single error could cost a goal but beating a man in your own half doesn’t get you much further forward. 

Town improved in the second half and didn’t seem to get stuck in their own half nearly as much. Herbie Kane had a role to play in this, as he was able to pick up the ball deep and move it forward even when he was under pressure. Kane is far from a complete player but the things he can do well, he does very well. For that reason, I can see him nailing down a place in our midfield despite McGuane and Kasumu waiting in the wings. 

As is often the case when embedding a new style, there’s still a lot of work for Town to do when they are in possession. But we’re only two games into the season and the new style has done well enough to deliver two victories even if it still needs some development. 

Goodman’s playing out from the back: kamikaze or the modern way?

Lee Nichols (or Lee Nipples as my son thinks he’s called) is eleven years older than Owen Goodman and as a result has a different mindset towards their job. The goalkeeper’s role in the modern game requires them to be as good with their feet as they are with their hands, whereas being weak at distribution didn’t used to be a barrier to succeeding as a keeper when Lee Nichols was Goodman’s age.

I didn’t really understand why we brought Goodman in when we had Nicholls and Chapman available but it makes more sense after seeing these first few games. Goodman is VERY confident in passing the ball out from the back. When he has the ball at his feet, he will always look to play it out quickly to someone nearby rather than going for the traditional hoof downfield. 

With none of our striking options being particularly good in the air, it does make sense to play the ball short most of the time but I have to admit that Goodman’s passing makes me nervous. Against Reading there were several times that he held the ball a very long time before releasing it just before he was closed down. And the short passes he made, while mostly accurate, were often to marked men. I noticed that our players dropped deep to receive the ball from him a lot of the time, this is most likely a deliberate tactic but I think there’s also an element of players dropping because they want to get a bit of space as Goodman will pass to them anyway. 

Paul Ogden asked Lee Grant about the team’s faith in Goodman’s ability to pass it short and he made it clear that this is exactly what he wants, so much so that he gets annoyed if the ball gets booted down field. He acknowledged the risk of this approach but also countered that it’s riskier to play a different way to the way you train, and drilling on this approach in training does reduce the chance of a mishap on match day. 

So it’s likely we’re going to have our hearts in our mouths plenty more times this season. But if it’s part of the big plan that helps Town to get promoted then it’s the way to go. An old school manager would scream at a keeper that passed the ball straight to a marked defender but in the modern game, it’s expected that defenders can receive the ball under pressure and move it forward. So far it’s just about working and as the team gels more it will hopefully be a bit less nerve wracking to watch.    

Reading looked decent

After losing their first two games, Reading fans won’t take a great deal of consolation in praise from Huddersfield Town fans but I thought they actually looked pretty decent despite the scoreline. I liked the way they pressed hard and tried to move the ball around in our half. They were sloppy in their build up play at times and often gifted the ball back to us just as they started to look dangerous. 

I can see Reading easily pushing for the playoffs if they play this way over the course of the season, assuming they learn to cut out the silly errors. With their captain and arguably best player subbed off injured early in the game, it was even more impressive how competitive they made this game. 

The game wasn’t a classic and lacked spark in the way that early kickoffs do but Reading showed they can play a bit. I’ve had a bit of a soft spot for them since we beat them in the 2017 playoff final, so I’m pleased to see that they’ve got some stability off the field now and a team that looks capable of doing well in League One. 

Could Ashia be the answer?

Huddersfield Town have done great business this summer, after a major clear out at the end of last season we’ve just about filled the gaping holes that we had in our squad. It was only a few months ago that Radinio Balker was the only centre back we had on the books. The only area of the pitch that Town are lacking in now, after bringing in 11 new players, is in the wide positions. Harness’ unavailability for this game highlighted that we lack cover for his position particularly as well as the left wing being covered by two converted fullbacks. 

If Town aren’t able to bring in more depth in this position, could Cameron Ashia fill this gap in our squad? A good goal and a couple of nice dribbles from Ashia aren’t enough evidence to show that he’s capable of playing regularly in the first team but it’s certainly a good start. 

It was a great goal but I think I enjoyed his celebration even more. The economics of running an academy to produce players for the first team could be questioned but the enjoyment of seeing one of our young lads taking his first steps in the game is great for fans to see. There have been long debates about the player-fan connection in recent times but the easiest way to heal that relationship is to have more moments like this. Ashia’s delight at scoring and the scenes of the away end going bonkers were superb to see. Let’s hope there’s a lot more of this kind of thing in the season ahead. 

As for Ashia, he’s surely done enough to earn a start in the Leicester game on Wednesday and can have a bit longer on the pitch to show what he can do. From the bits I’ve seen of him in preseason, he’s a great presser, carries the ball well and runs straight at defenders. I’m looking forward to seeing more of him.

Bring on Leicester and Blackpool

I’ve written earlier about how Town’s opening two games were tricky but the next two are arguably even harder. Leicester visit the Accu stadium on Wednesday in the League Cup and a team that was in the Premier League last season will no doubt provide stiff opposition. I’d guess that both teams will field second string teams but Town will still be massive underdogs in this game. The League Cup has a tendency to see upsets though, so I would expect even our fringe players to put up a good fight and hopefully get in the hat for the next round. If we lose, I’ll say that it’s a good thing so we can concentrate on the league but I actually like the League Cup and hope we can have a decent run.

Then we’ve got the trip to sunny Blackpool on Saturday. The sunny bit would usually be ironic but for once we’re playing Blackpool in the summer and it’s currently forecast to be 25 °C on Saturday afternoon. Expect to see a lot of red-faced Town fans in the stands. On the pitch, it will be a tough encounter as Blackpool have added well to their squad and Steve Bruce’s team are widely tipped to be dark horses this season (surely meaning they’re not dark horses, thinking about it) so it’ll be a tough game.