Are Huddersfield Town unprepared for the start of the new season?

Huddersfield Town concluded their preseason campaign at the weekend with a 4-1 victory at Tranmere Rovers with their second team and a 1-1 draw against Bolton with their, in theory, strongest team – though Bolton’s late equaliser came in the dying moments of the game when nearly half half the senior players had been subbed and replaced by the kids on the bench. 

Preseasons are notoriously difficult to use as indicators for the prospects for the season ahead but it’s literally all we have to go on until Town play Burnley on Friday of this week, so I thought I’d chew over some of my thoughts about the preseason campaign in general.

Too short, not ambitious but probably fine

Because Huddersfield Town’s 2021/22 ran for around a month longer than everyone else’s due to our playoff campaign it meant that our players had a shorter break and came back for preseason later than other clubs. This meant we’ve had less time to get them fit and to play friendlies. A more brutal regime might have kept the preseason start date the same and just let the players have a shorter holiday and called it the price of success but that would have felt harsh after such a crushing experience at Wembley, so I can understand why the players were given a bit of time to lick their wounds.

But, it has meant that our squad have had around two weeks less than other Championship teams for their pre seasons and therefore may not be at quite the same levels fitness wise. Then again, I have a feeling that footballers these days aren’t the same as those in generations past. Rather than rocking up to preseason a stone overweight after a month-long drinking binge, many have spent the summer getting into even better shape than they were during the regular season. So the shorter preseason may not have been such an issue.

I do worry that the schedule wasn’t all that ambitious though, all our games were against either League Two or League One opponents and all away from home. It might have been nice to have either taken on a Premier League side or a European team to give ourselves something a bit different to test our team against. As it stands, we’ve played teams that are beneath us in terms of ability levels and have really only had a test of our fitness levels. 

If I was to guess, the budget for a foreign training camp was probably blown on the week away in advance on the playoff final week and, to be honest, that was the right call because that was a better use of that money even though it didn’t ultimately lead to the result we wanted. The fact we’ve had to settle for a slightly underwhelming preseason this year isn’t the end of the world and we’ll soon forget about it once the real action starts at the end of the week.

Keeping it simple

We’ll get much more of a sense of the kind of coach Danny Schofield is in the coming weeks but my sense so far is that we’re not going to spend nearly as much time talking about tactics with him as we have with previous head coaches. I get the impression that he just wants to get the best players on the pitch in their best positions and let them get on with their job. 

David Hartrick wrote in the Examiner that the tactical system is a 4-1-4-1 but it looks to me like a 4-2-3-1 from the streams I’ve been watching. My point though is that the conversations about tactics aren’t going to be that important because It’s going to be a simpler approach. Maybe I’m doing Schofield a disservice but he seems to be less interested in micromanaging every second of the match and happier to trust the players to get on with doing their job. 

This could be a good or a bad thing for Huddersfield Town’s fortunes. I think Carlos managed to turn water into wine with some of the results he squeezed out of his Town team last season. Instead, I suspect we’ll see Town float back to their natural level this season. But I think we’ve improved our squad to where our level is midtable rather than relegation fodder, so that’s something at least. 

Not enough of the new boys

One of the key parts of a preseason campaign is the chance to get a look at new players and to bed them into the team. Sadly that hasn’t really happened this season. Bad luck, shortened timescales and fewer games has meant that I wouldn’t be surprised if we didn’t see any of the new players start against Burnley next week. 

It may be that the B Team games are used to help build up fitness and integrate some of these new players given how rushed this preseason has felt. Anjorin and Nakayama have not yet played a minute of preseason so we are either going to have to wait a while before we see these new acquisitions or we’re going to have to accept that their early outings are going to involve an element of them having to learn on the job. The same goes for all the new signings really, as most of the other new players have played in the weaker teams on the double friendly days, so haven’t spent time playing alongside the players they are likely to play with during first team matches.

Do we have enough coaches?

I appreciate that the sudden and unexpected departure of Carlos Corberan and his right-hand man caught the club on the hop but I wonder if we are a little short on bodies around the training ground now. Being a complete sad act, I tend to watch the training videos that the club put out and I noticed a difference in the ones put out recently compared to those in the previous regime. During the Corberan era the training sessions had a different feel to them, they were a lot more stressful. There was a constant noise of coaches shouting and giving instructions. The more recent ones sound a lot quieter and relaxed. 

This might be a good thing and a conscious choice to not beast players. But it could be because there aren’t enough people around to properly coach the sessions. I’m reaching a bit with this point, I accept, but I do worry that Schofield may not have the staff around him that he needs. He’s a new coach and needs all the backing he can get. So being short staffed isn’t going to help. An experienced number two would go a long way to add a bit of gravitas behind the scenes and I think it would be a valuable addition. I worry that Schofield looks like the cheap, and dare I say even the short-term, option as head coach. So spending a bit of money on a decent backroom staff for him would be a show of faith in him and help him to get settled in the role. 

Some youngsters have impressed

On to more positive things. I think the young lads from the B Team that have been used to make up the numbers in the squad for preseason have done a very good job. The ones that have stood out the most for me have been Ben Jackson, Brahima Diarra and Pat Jones. I would like to see all three of these youngsters promoted to the first team and given chances to break into the match day squad this season. 

We’ll be allowed to use up to five substitutes this season and that rule change will be ideal for these kinds of players that are capable of coming on and impressing in the final ten minutes of a match. Brahima Diarra is incredibly positive with his running and will always try to make something happen with the ball at his feet – most of the time it doesn’t but he’s so direct and aggressive that it’s exciting to watch anyway. Pat Jones has raw pace, a few tricks and has broadened out a good but since his last taste of first team football a few years ago. And Ben Jackson has scored three goals this preseason and all three have been superb.

It may be that these players need time out on loan to develop further but there are definite signs from these preseason games that they are capable of playing at the same level as our first team regulars.