A limp response – Notes on Town’s defeat to Blackpool

Huddersfield Town lost to Blackpool on Tuesday night in a defeat that saw them continue their poor form from Saturday’s terrible performance against Northampton. While it wasn’t quite as bad a showing as the 3-1 drubbing, the lows weren’t quite so low, the fact we came into the game hoping to see a positive reaction after a defeat and were served up another plate of hot rubbish from Town made this defeat feel worse. 

I asked in the title of my post-Northampton article if that game was just a blip. Losing the next game with a lifeless effort from the Terriers suggests there are bigger problems than just a one-off bad day. This article will rake over the goals of another disappointing home display for the Terriers and speculate about what might happen next for Town.

More bad goals given away 

The first goal is awful to watch from a Town perspective despite also involving some very nice Blackpool attacking. Sorensen starts things off by taking himself out of the game by jumping into a tackle and missing the player and ball completely, then Herbie Kane covers in the right back area, hopelessly outpaced by Blackpool’s winger. CJ Hamilton, who didn’t get where he is today by letting Herbie Kane tackle him out on the wing. So he shrugged off our midfielder’s two lacklustre attempts to make a challenge and put in an excellent cross which was nodded home by Kyle Joseph, with not much done to stop him from the nearby Town defenders. Watching the whole thing back, nobody in a Town shirt looks like they’re desperate to stop goals going in at the moment. Like it’s something they care about deeply. There’s not nearly enough urgency and that’s why we weren’t getting to the ball quickly enough and didn’t anticipate threats at the right times. 

Zooming back a bit, this first goal is another one that’s come down Sorensen’s flank from a simple ball in behind him when he’s been caught out of position. Admittedly, his teammates should have bailed him out and snuffed out the threat but his positional weakness is being targeted and bearing fruit for opposition teams now. Even in this game where he was actually playing deeper than usual, he still slipped up quite a few times and got caught too high up the pitch or jumped into tackles and got left high up the pitch. Whether this is a symptom of this system or an individual weakness of the player is debatable, but it doesn’t really matter when either way results in an obvious flaw that can be so easily exploited by every team we play. If getting goals against Town is as simple as “knock it in behind the wingbacks” and we can’t find a way to counteract that, then we’re in for a long season.

The second goal was almost as stupid a goal to concede as last Saturday’s howler when Helik passed it into his own net. There were 50 minutes and ten seconds on the clock when Nicholls decided to pass it short to a defender. So while you can’t blame the keeper for the awful overplay that followed, you can question his decision making, when the half is virtually over and there is no realistic prospect of short passing progressing the ball up the other end of the pitch for us to get anything, why did he pass it short to Lonwijk? He was facing the scoreboard, so could see time was up. If he just booted the ball downfield the ref would most likely have blown up and we’d have gone in 1-0 down. Or otherwise the ball is so far from danger there’s no realistic prospect of a goal before half time.

Instead Nicholls passed short to Lonwijk, who passed it to Wiles, who gave it to Blackpool for them to score a pretty decent breakaway goal. Turning a bad first half into a very bad first half.

Another limp response

I talked after the Northampton game about Town struggling to mount a proper response to going behind and it happened again against Blackpool. If anything, it was worse, as we didn’t even enjoy a spell of sustained pressure or really push hard to get back into the game. There were isolated chances here and there for Town but no period of the game where it felt like Town were really making Blackpool uncomfortable or asking them questions they couldn’t answer. 

Why are we struggling so much in these situations? Michael Duff talked about the fact that his team performs well in training but something goes wrong when they are in front of their home fans. That’s a bit worrying. While there is pressure to perform in front of a stadium like ours and an unhappy crowd can be unpleasant to play in front of, professional sportsmen should be desperate to play in front of the biggest audience possible. And while our fans will grumble if they don’t like what they see, Town fans will typically back a player when they can see there’s genuine effort going in and when the players give the fans something to cheer they will always give them their full-throated support.

The problem was that the game gave the fans no reason to spark into life, so the fans couldn’t then give the players a boost to get them going and the game was a pretty dull affair. The second half in particular was efficiently killed off by Blackpool, with some effective game management that I really don’t blame them for as it made sense in the circumstances. Sadly though, we weren’t able to produce the goals that would have made their time wasting theatrics look futile. Instead the game petered out to a dreary end.

Duff’s changes mostly failed to make an impact

Michael Duff brought in Joe Hodge, Freddie Ladapo and Herbie Kane for this match in an attempt to shake things up after the terrible match against Northampton. Sadly, only Hodge’s inclusion was a complete success. The diminutive Irishman (though he sounds about as Irish as Michael Duff does Northern Irish when you hear him speak) was one of the few highlights for Town on the night and showed some great ball retention, passed well and made some clever little runs from deep-lying midfield positions to move us up the field that we’ve not seen since the days of Lewis O’Brien. 

The other two inclusions in the starting eleven were less positive changes. I’m a card-carrying member of the Herbie Kane fan club but I’d struggle to find many redeeming features in this outing. He had a pass completion percentage of under 50% on the night, which is pretty shocking for anyone, nevermind the man who is supposed to be our cultured ballplaying midfielder. But it makes sense, because every time he picked up the ball he was trying to unpick the defence with a perfect pass that was rarely on. He’s got a bit of magic in his boots but perhaps not as much as he sometimes thinks. He also, importantly, doesn’t have as much time on the ball as he thinks he does and too often gets caught in possession. Equally, he’s painfully slow when tracking runners on the defensive side of the game and was a bit of a liability at times. I think he’s got a big future at Town and I’m willing to put this game down to ring rustiness after his injury but oof, this was not pretty to watch.

Slightly better than Kane but nowhere near the unqualified success of Hodge was Ladapo, who displayed a first touch that was pretty ropey at times but also showed some neat linkup play at other times. My personal feeling about him is that he’s not a superstar but he an actual striker and a big physical presence, which is such a novelty in a Town player that I’m not sure the rest of the team have worked out how to get the best out of playing with him in the team (for example Nicholls kicked the ball deliberately to Koroma to challenge for headers multiple times, despite Ladapo obviously having a much better chance of winning those battles). His poor touch, lack of pace and mis-hitting a good striking opportunity suggest he might not be a great signing for Town but I think there might be attributes he offers that will benefit the team. Like with every other striker on our books, he’s not the complete package but he’s got a few bits that are good and some bits that aren’t so good. If we could make a Frankenstein’s monster out of all the strikers on our books we’d probably be able to create the striker we actually need.

Jaheim Headley redeems himself

I was critical of Headley after Northampton so it’s important to say that he redeemed himself with a very steady performance in this game. I think both wingbacks helped themselves and the team by playing a more reserved role and holding a more sensible position in the pitch and not pushing up so high. Regardless of tactics, he was just better in every aspect of his game against Blackpool and made some decent forward runs as well as being more solid defensively. 

Miller could potentially be back in contention against Reading as he’s recovering from his hamstring injury but I wouldn’t be too worried to see Headley picked again. If nothing else, I’d like to see him given the chance to play well in two consecutive matches, as that consistency is the thing he really needs to add to his game. If he can do that, we’ll have two quality options in the left wingback area. 

Was Jonathan Hogg’s influence missed?

Listening to Michael Duff’s post-match comments after the Blackpool game, he sounded at a loss as to why the team didn’t perform on the night, though he did at least have the humility to accept that it was another bad performance and didn’t try and hide behind a couple of chances in the second half as defenses to an terrible performance. 

One theory that has gone through my mind about why Town might have lacked a bit of bite and urgency in this game might have been the lack of Jonathan Hogg in the middle of the park. Not because of what he brings as a player but the force of his personality. Whenever a player doesn’t put in enough effort or shirks a tackle and Hoggy is nearby, he’ll scream and shout at the offender. In fact, quite often, if Hogg himself makes a mistake, he’ll start shouting at the nearest Town player and blame them for the incident. So while Joe Hodge was actually an upgrade in the defensive midfielder department, he did none of the drill sergeant work that The General (a nickname that I find a bit cringey if I’m honest) usually does.

Obviously, it’s completely pathetic that the players need Hogg to tell them to do their job. But perhaps, and it’s only a theory, the slight drop in standards that can be the difference between stopping a cross or letting it go may have happened because there wasn’t an angry man on the pitch shouting at the rest of the team for 90 minutes. 

If this really is the issue (though I hope it’s not), the solution isn’t to have Hogg on the pitch all the time, instead it’s to make sure that the rest of the team take personal accountability for their actions and aren’t doing things purely because they don’t want a roasting from Hoggy. A Hogg roast, if you will. Michael Duff talks a lot about the work that needs to be done to change the mentality at the club, this potentially seems like an area of weakness that has been exposed.

Blackpool did well 

Because this is a Huddersfield Town blog, I’ve mostly focussed on how rubbish Huddersfield Town were, but I also think it’s worth spending a moment on how good Blackpool were too. They had done the minimal homework required to know how to exploit our weaknesses but they also played some pretty decent football during the stage of the game where they needed to. Then, when they needed to indulge in the dark arts to manage the game out, they did that too. 

It’s a bit early to be thinking too much about where teams will finish up but if they play like they did on Tuesday night for the rest of the season, it’s easy to imagine them making it into the playoffs. Which I find quite unpleasant to write, because I don’t like Steve Bruce and wish he would go back to writing novels about crime-solving football managers. 

Reading away is up next

Town travel to Reading next and it’ll be a tricky game for Town, potentially. From Michael Duff’s comments in the press conference, it sounds like they can be very good on their day, or, if you catch them on an off day, not so good. I can’t imagine what it’s like to support a team like that!

There’s potential for fan protest against the current ownership situation at Reading that could disrupt the game, though the latest seems to be that it’s all expected to go ahead without too many problems. 

Regardless of the opposition, I think the important thing is for Huddersfield Town to get out of their own way. In their last two games they’ve made it so easy for their opponents to beat them. My hope for this game is that we at least don’t give away any gifts to Reading. No stupid red cards, no sloppy penalties, no comedy own goals and make them work hard if they’re going to get the ball in the net.