Huddersfield Town were unconvincing in their 2-1 win over Cambridge on Saturday but they found a way to win, as the saying goes. Joe Taylor popped up with two late goals after Town went behind to Cambridge towards the end of the second half. In fact, nearly all of the game’s highlights occurred in the final fifteen minutes and everything before the 82nd minute was pretty dreary stuff to watch.
Cambridge United were a tricky opponent and I think their tenacity and awkwardness led to a number of Town’s players underperforming. The accepted wisdom is that it’s bad to play freshly promoted teams early in a new season because they carry through their momentum from the previous successful campaign.
Why did Huddersfield Town struggle for most of this game?
Until Cambridge United opened the scoring in the 80th minute, this game was a dreary, bitty, unpleasant affair. I think there were four main reasons…
- The pitch was a boggy mess
I know professional footballers should be able to make the best of whatever surface they’re given to play on but the pitch was pretty poor on Saturday. If you’re hoping to play expansive, intricate, passing football then it’s an advantage if the ball will travel properly across the grass. The Radio Leeds commentary team pointed out that sprinklers had been put on before the game despite the downpour we saw during the match. This feels like it was a deliberate attempt by Cambridge United to literally bog the game down and make it hard for a quality game of football to take place. Even at League One level, most playing surfaces are like snooker tables, so it was a novelty to see the ball not running properly along a saturated pitch, it felt like a throwback to the pre-Premier League days of football. I’ve no complaints about Cambridge / the weather doing this to the pitch, they’ll be underdogs in most games this season, so why not do everything you can to gain an advantage?
- Cambridge United did a number on us
The approach Cambridge United took in this game wasn’t all that pretty to watch but it did work pretty effectively for them. They were good at turning the game into a grapple and this meant the game was limited to flashes of attacking football, which tended to come from Cambridge rather than Town. If I didn’t know that this team was managed by Neil Harris already, I’d have known after watching his team play for a while. His way of setting up teams might not be to everyone’s taste, but he’s good at getting a team organised and fighting hard for every ball. I don’t expect them to have any trouble staying in League One, as being organised and fighting hard is enough to win plenty of games at this level.
- Drury got his tactics wrong
It was refreshing to hear Martin Drury admit he got his tactics wrong in his post-match comments. My interpretation was that he didn’t want us to press too high up the field and leave ourselves exposed at the back, but in doing this it allowed Cambridge too much time on the ball and helped them to grow in confidence. We also completely lost the midfield battle, which I think was down to the Ledson and Harness pairing lacking a bit of stability.
- Too many players underperformed
Nobody was awful in this game for Town but very few reached the levels they’ve shown in our previous two games. Ibane Bowat made the most obvious error, when the soggy pitch and a light shove caused him to lose his footing in the build up to Cambridge’s goal but also was guilty of some very loose passing out from the back. Bowat was far from alone when it came to sloppy passing, with most players inexplicably surrendering possession at one time or another. Fletcher found it harder to link up with the other forwards compared to our other games this season, and looked frustrated for long periods. Even Fernandes struggled to make an impact, with most of his dribbles occurring in safe areas of the pitch or involving him running down blind alleys.
A Taylor-made victory
I’d have added Joe Taylor to the list of Town underperformers I mentioned above if he had been subbed before the 80th minute (this was his first 90 minutes of the season). Taylor touched the ball 17 times up until the first goal went in. After 80 minutes he had a further 14 touches, scored our equaliser, won a penalty and converted that penalty that won us the game. For a poacher like Taylor, I find this a completely acceptable state of affairs, if he’s not getting decent service then he won’t be in the game much but when he was able to get on the ball in dangerous areas he did the business for us.
Taylor’s first was the culmination of our best passing move of the game and was worth one of the few bits of quality in an otherwise turgid game. The one-two with Bojan to set up the shooting opportunity was lovely but watching back the replay shows Taylor using his shoulder to knock the ball to his strike partner, which I’d consider handball if it was the opposition doing it but is completely fine for our players to do. The strike for the goal was excellent too, with Taylor smashing the ball low into the bottom corner.
I’m going to talk about the refereeing decision for the penalty separately but here I’m only going to praise the Town players that created the moment where a decision needed to be made. Radulovic did some excellent tackling back to win the ball in a dangerous area, Fernandes picked up the ball and threaded a lovely ball to Taylor who took an excellent first touch to give himself something to chase in behind Cambridge’s back line. His pace meant their player had to either allow him through on goal or to risk a tackle that would risk a penalty. This was exactly the kind of service we’ve bemoaned the lack of in Taylor’s previous seasons at Town but when we find these sorts of through balls for him to run on to, he’s proven he can be deadly.
There’s a small chance this could be Taylor’s last game in a Town shirt, given the rumours circulating about other clubs’ interest in him. Given that he’s now integrated into our team and clearly can be effective for us, the fact he seems happy to be here, the lateness in the transfer window and our comfortable financial situation, it would surely take silly money for us to be tempted to sanction a sale. We’ve been in a similar situation in the past, where we’ve allowed a key player to leave without time to replace them, it rarely ends well. Hopefully Taylor will stay at Town and he can score the goals to make us a decent team this season.
Did the football gods level up last weekend’s injustice?
When teams get a bad decision in a game, it’s common for pundits to say that these sorts of mistakes from officials level out over the season. I’d argue that Town seem to disproportionately end on the wrong side of that equation but most football fans would probably say the same about their team. In this case though, it felt like Taylor’s penalty decision was a little generous and helped to redress the clear injustice of last weekend, where Taylor’s long-range effort bounced over the line and came out without being awarded as a goal. Not instant karma, but karma with a one week delay.
Having watched multiple replays of the penalty incident, I can’t say for sure if it is or isn’t a penalty so I’ve some sympathy for the referee even if I’m leaning more towards it not being a penalty. Firstly, the Cambridge player seemed to take the ball and could argue there wasn’t even a foul at all. But even if you accept it was a foul, the contact started outside the penalty area and it was Taylor’s momentum that took him into the penalty area.
If Town were denied a goal that could have helped them win at MK Dons last weekend but received a dodgy penalty in this game that allowed them a win that should have been a draw then I suppose the football gods have done their job. It would be nice if we had officials that got it right every time but having seen how VAR drains the fun out of football at the top end of the game, I think I’d rather suffer these occasional mistakes than having to spend three minutes watching a referee review a video before I can celebrate a goal.
The difference between Lee Grant and Martin Drury
Last season we saw Lee Grant produce performances similar to this one, where we struggled to impose ourselves on a game and effectively lost the tactical battle. He would then come out to do the press and put a positive spin on a game that was dreadful to watch. It felt like watching a cult leader argue the sky is green with complete conviction despite fans having the evidence of their own eyes to show the game had been bobbins to watch.
Martin Drury showed refreshing honesty in his assessment of the game, admitting his own mistakes and that some of his players struggled with the game too. I find this reassuring, as it means he knows there’s work to do and this quality of performance was below the standard we want to set. When managers come out and try to whitewash a poor display it sends the opposite message, that mediocrity is acceptable and we don’t intend to learn from our mistakes.
I will say that there are only so many times that a manager can claim responsibility for poor displays before it starts to look like a pattern and raises concerns. Lee Grant talked a lot about taking the learnings from games but rarely converted it to improvements on the pitch. Hopefully Martin Drury will learn from the experience of this game and we’ll do better the next time we face a similar challenge.
Town did well to see out the result
Given Town’s recent annoying tendency to throw away points from winning positions in the final moments of games, it was a concern when nine minutes of stoppage time were announced. However, it’s worth pointing out that Town showed good game management, character and tactical awareness in the closing stages. Obviously Cambridge threw caution to the wind in search of an equaliser but we responded well to that threat and I’d argue we looked most likely to score in this portion of the game because we counter-attacked well.
There was a risk that conceding stoppage time goals could become a feature of Huddersfield Town under Martin Drury but this game is the first step towards casting off that particular problem. I still don’t think we’re the kind of team that can snatch a goal then shut up shop but at least we’ve shown we can see a game out when we need to.
AOB
Muggedoff.com – Neil Harris said that he felt mugged off dot com after the match, having gone from being ahead in the 80th minute to behind in the 89th. He has a point, as his team did the hard work for the majority of the game but fell apart after they went ahead. I’ve always found him to be a disagreeable character from his playing days through to his managerial career, so it’s nice to see someone I don’t like finishing a game against us feeling aggrieved. For those that wondered, the web address muggedoff.com is currently for sale for $1,699.
Collins makes his debut – I don’t think Archie Collins had a great deal to do with Town’s goals but he was on the pitch when they happened. His performance was fine without being exceptional but it was nice to see our new midfielder get onto the pitch. I noticed that he and Ledson looked to both be doing similar jobs at times, so the pair probably need a bit of time together to work out who does what when they’re on the pitch together. Assuming Ledson and Collins is the midfield duo we’re planning on going with this season.
The transfer deadline approaches – The next couple of days could be quite busy for Huddersfield Town, with our squad both bloated in some areas of the pitch and threadbare in others. I suspect we’ll see a flurry of sales and loans to make space in the squad and hopefully a few targeted bits of recruitment to strengthen us in key areas. Town are so desperate for a left winger, I suspect Chris Markham might have been on the phone to Jeremy Corbyn this week and I think we’re pretty much always in the market for a new striker regardless of how many we have on the books. Drury has said he’s happy with the squad but would like one or two more to strengthen further. I suspect in private he might tell a different story about desperately needing more attacking options and shifting on players he has no intention of playing.