Angry Bruce, Sparkling Tino, Jon Russell: Submarine Commander, Schofield opinions and transfer shopping list – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s draw with West Brom

Huddersfield Town escaped a late penalty appeal to come away from their match against West Brom with a point. Which is more than they deserved from the balance of play but is less than any team should expect when they have a 2-0 lead early in the first half and are at home. 

At least Town weren’t as bad as they were in their opening defeats, but there are still consistent issues in Danny Schofield’s team that point towards problems that need to be solved. Having said that, we also saw a moment of pure magic from Tino Anjorin, when he curled an absolute beauty into the top corner. So it wasn’t all grumbles!

A lucky draw

It’s unusual to throw away a 2-0 lead and to come away thankful to have hung on for the point but that was my overwhelming feeling after this game. West Brom were the better side on the day in my opinion and despite them not playing as well as I expected them to given the talent assembled in their ranks, they still created far more chances than Town and should have put away enough of them to win this game. 

Lee Nicholls made a couple of vital saves once more, a few of West Brom’s players fluffed opportunities that they really should have done better with and then the referee was feeling very generous when Will Boyle got tangled up with Karlan Grant. So there were multiple situations where the Baggies could have scored the decisive goal. Having said that, I suppose we had a shot from range that hit the inside of the woodwork too, among a few other chances so it could have gone the other way.

Last season at The Hawthorns there was a very dodgy penalty decision given to West Brom against Sorba Thomas for an alleged high foot that want high and didn’t make any contact with their player. You could argue that the penalty decision that was not given on Saturday redresses the balance that last season’s injustice. I personally don’t feel like that though, I’d rather we just had officials that didn’t make terrible mistakes all the time. Not wanting to bang on about it too much, but we might be playing in the Premier League now if officials did their job better.

Angry Bruce

It’s the simple things in life that make you happy and it turns out that there are fewer things that make me happier than seeing Steve Bruce getting more and more angry on the touchline. It was like a beserk dinner lady had infiltrated the ground at one stage, as he remonstrated with the fourth official. 

I felt that Bruce left Huddersfield Town in the lurch after the Rubery years and after he ditched us we slumped down to the fourth tier and spent years in the doldrums. While it’s not exactly Bruce’s fault that all that happened, I was young enough at the time to draw simple conclusions and lay all the blame at his feet and have held a grudge ever since. So aside from Anjorin’s moment of brilliance, watching Bruce look thoroughly miserable was the highlight of my Saturday afternoon’s entertainment.

He was probably justified in his rage, the referee didn’t give him an obvious penalty and there were a few other fairly iffy decisions that didn’t go his way. Regardless, I enjoyed seeing a manager I’ve disliked for a long time getting more and more irrate as  the match progressed.

I also think he isn’t doing a particularly good job in his role and the pressure is showing. West Brom should be a force to be reckoned with at this level with the squad they have got. It’s pretty much a Championship All Star team that they’ve assembled and they didn’t seem to add up to the sum of their parts against a Huddersfield Town team that are in a transitional phase where they are vulnerable in several key areas of the pitch. I have a feeling Bruce is unlikely to finish the season as West Brom manager unless he can improve their performances significantly from the one we saw on Saturday.

Tino sparkles

On to more positive matters, what a first half Tino Anjorin had! In my team predictions article I said I thought he hadn’t yet properly shown us what he can do yet. Well, now he truly has. Even before he blasted in his goal it was plain to see he had the bit between his teeth as he looked to get on the ball and drive at West Brom’s defence whenever possible. 

The goal was something else, probably the second best goal I’ve seen from a corner behind Tony Carss’ wonder goal all those years ago. I was grumbling about the futility of short corners just as the ball left his foot and seconds later the whole stadium was on its feet applauding a true moment of quality. If we see a better goal scored than that this season then we’ll be lucky. Though, I suspect it will also be scored by Anjorin as he spoke after the game about how much he practices those kind of strikes. 

The only strange thing was how early he was subbed out of the game for fitness reasons despite not having played for a few weeks. I appreciate he missed the Norwich game with a dead leg but it seems that fitness is a bit of an issue for Anjorin. On the bright side, it could be that there’s another level that we’ll see him reach when he’s fully fit and firing at 100%. 

John Russell: Submarine Commander

Two-nil is a dangerous lead, or so goes the old saying that gets bandied around. It’s certainly a lot more dangerous of a lead to have if you decide to defend it by surrendering so much space in the middle of the park that your midfielders are almost standing on the toes of your defenders.

The worst culprit was Jon Russell, who was so deep at times he was like a submarine captain that had crashed his vessel on the sea bed. Not only that, he started deploying the technique that Anthony Kaye was the master of, which was allowing players to run past him while he pointed at them and shouted for other people to pick them up. 

I was a huge fan of Jon Russell’s last season when he broke into the first team and despite his obvious lack of pace I thought he really improved the team when Carlos brought him through. This season I feel like his flaws have been badly exposed and he’s struggled to get anywhere close to the same level. Schofield did him no favours in this game by deploying him in the defensive midfielder role, as he doesn’t have the agility or aggression to fulfill the duties of that role, but more generally I feel like Carlos may have done a better job of putting Russell in a tactical system that allowed him to show off his strengths and mask his weaknesses. Whereas this season it feels like we’re getting all his flaws and not nearly enough of his best bits. I still think he’s the same player underneath all this though and he’s just got to work on how to play in this different tactical system without getting exposed so much. 

Six games in: my opinion of Danny Schofield

Town have now played five league games and one cup game under Danny Schofield and it’s probably enough to have at least started to form an opinion about the new head coach. I think we’ve seen some glimmers of hope so far but also some worrying signs too. It’s still very early days and things are still settling down but I’d have liked to have felt more confidence in Schofield by this stage.

I definitely like him and I really want him to do well but I’m not sure he will. He was a great player for Town, he comes across as a really genuine and nice bloke in his interviews and I get the impression that he understands what both the club and the fans want. My concern is whether he’s able to deliver. 

Thinking about the two head coaches that have been successful in recent years, Wagner and Corberan, they were control freaks that had very specific ideas about what they wanted on the pitch and they communicated that clearly to their players. The Cowleys did the same but didn’t achieve as much. I don’t feel like Schofield’s vision of what he wants is quite so clear at this stage or if there’s much of a philosophy underlying what he’s doing.

On the other hand, I think there are some nice things that Schofield is doing. He trusts the players and empowers them to express themselves on the pitch. It feels like we’re more of an attacking force on the pitch this season too because of that even if it has unsettled the solid defensive base we built last season as a result. 

In the league his record is played five, won one, drawn one, lost three, which is relegation form but it has been a tricky start and there have been mitigating factors for these results. I think we’ll pull out of the bottom three but I doubt we’ll climb a lot higher. We look too dodgy at the back, don’t have any presence in midfield and haven’t played well for more than isolated patches of games yet. I think there’s scope to improve but those implements need to come fairly soon.

Generally speaking, I like managers to be given as long as possible to establish themselves rather than chopping and changing too often. I think Schofield deserves at least until January regardless of results and then we can see what he’s about. Clearly the club rate him if they wanted to trust him with this level of job without any senior experience as a head coach. The jury is still out in my eyes and it could go either way. The best thing the club can do now is give him the tools to succeed by backing him in the transfer market..

What do Town need to do before the transfer deadline? 

This blogpost is already a bit too long, so I’ll summarise my thoughts on what Town need to do in the transfer market in bullet point form:

• Confirm the signing of Tyreece Simpson – we’ve all seen the video and apparently he was spotted at the match on Saturday too so hopefully it’s a mere formality to confirm his signing now. (Though there was a rumour on Twitter that the hold up is Ipswich asking for more money, so maybe it’s not a done deal.)
• Bring in a centre back – We’ve been heavily linked with Mbete on loan from Man City and Helik on a permanent deal from Barnsley. It seems strange to be considering two such different prospects. I’d prefer the proven performer in Helik as he would instantly make us better but that doesn’t seem like the kind of signing we would typically make as he would cost fairly significant money and is in his prime years so isn’t likely to be sold for a profit in the future. 
• A central midfielder would be quite useful to deal with the lack of quality we have in that area at the moment. Ideally someone with the ability to control the game, pick out a pass and make a tackle. I think I’m just saying that I want Lewis O’Brien back.
• While we’re looking at the gaps left by departed players, a left back to properly replace Harry Toffolo might be handy given Ruffels has mostly failed to step up and Nakayama has tended to be used in central defence. 
• A backup keeper is either an expensive luxury or an absolute necessity depending on whether Lee Nicholls remains available all season or not. In a typical season you can probably expect your first choice to play 95% of your games without any issue. But if disaster should strike and he breaks his thumb we’d be left with a handful of promising but untested youngsters. 
• Then there’s the trickier task of offloading all of the players that aren’t likely to play. While fans are desperate to see him play in the first team, Danny Grant seems to not be fancied so should go out on loan to prove himself, Josh Koroma and Rolando Aarons are in a similar position too. Then there are countless B Team players that may get shunted out to non-league for a bit of work experience and toughening up.