Terrier Spirit

Oct192020 by Terrier Spirit11 Comments

Carlos’ lucky chinos, imaginative strategies, yapping dogs, a niggly ref & maximum effort – notes on the Swansea win

Matches, Tactics

Huddersfield Town beat Swansea 2-1 in a hard fought encounter in South Wales yesterday. It wasn't the purest form of Carlosball we’ve seen so far but it was the most impressive win under Corberán in my view. Swansea are a good team that have started the season well but we came with a gameplan which, with a bit of luck, paid off. Here are a few of my unassociated ramblings about the game... Getting the tactics right We didn’t start this game particularly well and seemed to invite a lot of pressure onto ourselves which led to several good chances for Swansea in the opening exchanges. Thankfully Jamal Lowe spurned the best of these and injured himself in the process, which diminished his influence for the rest of the game. Town didn’t sparkle in the first half but there was a steady impro...

Oct182020 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

“A joy to watch” Players ratings for Town’s 2-1 victory over Swansea

Matches

Expectations were low going into this game against an inform Swansea team that had not yet lost a match. Town defied the odds and emerged from south Wales with all three points following a great team effort in the pitch. It was a disciplined performance that also required a fair share of luck to see us over the line. On balance, the win felt deserved and there were some excellent individual displays from Town's players. Here are my ratings. Ben Hamer - 7 out of 10 A busy game for Hamer, with him making all the saves you'd expect him to make and notching up another game without a goal-conceding error. I thought he was regularly given the ball in tight areas and pressured by the Swansea attack but kept his cool and got the ball out of danger. Some of his passing was a bit wayward at times...

Oct172020 by Terrier Spirit7 Comments

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Swansea

Matches

After a disappointing end to the transfer window which saw Town fail to add any new players to the squad, Carlos Corberán has the same old faces to choose from for the game against Swansea. On the plus side, a few of the injuries from before the international break have healed and the likes of O'Brien and Schindler should be fit to play. So here's my predicted starting eleven. Goalkeeper: Hamer Now a fairly obvious selection after being given a chance and so far not letting himself down. The news that Ryan Schofield is back in training and able to use his injured thumb again suggests competition for this position could hot up soon. Defence: Pipa, Schindler, Sarr, Toffolo I'm predicting Carlos will play his first choice back four for the first time today. I believe Pipa came back from...

Oct172020 by Terrier Spirit2 Comments

A Huddersfield Town fan’s opinion on Terence Kongolo’s move to Fulham

Transfers

Terence Kongolo completed his move to Fulham last night following months of speculation linking them and the player. The deal represents a significant loss from the £18m Huddersfield Town spent on the defender a couple of seasons ago but at least gets him off the wage bill. The deal was only confirmed hours after the five pm deadline after many had thought the deal could have fallen through at the last minute. Thankfully it all went through OK in the end and Huddersfield Town have offloaded another one of their expensive signings that didn’t work out. Here are my thoughts on Terence Kongolo and whether this transfer is a good move or not. It’s easiest to break Kongolo’s time down into three periods to properly sum up his time at Town. Kongolo's early day at Huddersfield When Kongolo ca...

Oct162020 by Terrier Spirit14 Comments

Karlan Grant’s transfer to West Brom – who got the best out of the deal?

Transfers

Huddersfield Town finally sold Karlan Grant to West Bromwich Albion last night for an undisclosed fee that is rumoured to be around £15m. It's a transfer saga that has rumbled on for almost the entirety of this window so it's a relief to be able to move on from this story and to talk about something else. Before we do though, I'm going to take a look at who got the best out of this deal. Karlan Grant I'd say the most obvious winner is Grant himself. He's signed a six-year deal at his new club which is a huge commitment from West Brom. Not only that, Grant is almost certainly going to be getting a massive pay rise out of this move. I saw a rumour that he'll be earning £60,000 a week at West Brom, which may not be true but if it's remotely close to the figure he's going to be paid then h...

Oct142020 by Terrier SpiritNo Comments

Huddersfield Town fan creates beautiful portraits of the squad

Social media

While many Huddersfield Town fans have spent the international break reading endless articles about transfer gossip, one instead chose to use the down time between games to create some amazing works of art. The owner of the East Anglian Terriers Twitter account has put together portraits of the current Huddersfield squad and they're pretty special. Take a look below: Ben Hamer I particularly like how this one captures the haunted look in his eyes. The kind of look you only get after you've accidentally chucked the ball into your own net. (In fairness, he's been good so far this season but it's hard not to make cheap jokes.) Ryan Schofield Despite having thumbs made of polystyrene, Schofield looks pretty happy in this pic. The colours are all mostly within the lines too. Top work. Joel Pe...

Oct112020 by Terrier Spirit17 Comments

Why are there so many articles about Karlan Grant’s move to West Brom but so little progress?

Transfers

The ongoing story of West Brom’s pursuit of Huddersfield Town’s Karlan Grant has long since passed into the realm of being a “saga”. Every single day for the last few weeks there are headlines about the potential deal being on the verge of happening. Despite the player wanting the move, Huddersfield Town being willing to let him go and West Brom desperately needing a striker the move seems to be stuck. While there hasn't been any discernable change in the status of this move for week, we still get a deluge of articles commenting on the proposed transfer. Here are a few of the reasons why there are so many articles written about this potential transfer and so few genuine changes in what’s happening. The deal is genuinely stuck It feels like most transfer deals have taken longer than us...

Oct92020 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

How has Carlos Corberán done since arriving at Huddersfield Town from Leeds United?

Opinion

Obviously, we all know it’s very early days in Carlos Corberán's time at Huddersfield Town but the international break presents a lull in the season to take stock of how things are going so far. Corberán took charge of Town shortly after the end of last season and has already overseen a dramatic change in the way Huddersfield Town play and embedded several new players into the team. Here's an early assessment of how he's getting on. If you can't be bothered reading to the bottom, a very quick summary would be that he's doing pretty good. A tricky preseason The implications of the pandemic meant the players had the shortest post-season break ever and Carlos had the shortest ever pre-season to get across his ideas. On top of that Town had played an intense period of games after the restar...

Oct82020 by Terrier SpiritNo Comments

Huddersfield Town FIFA 21 player rankings – Best XI, who’s underrated, who’s overrated and what is says about our squad

Opinion, Social media

I’d like to start by saying that I’m fully aware that this article is not for everyone. If you’re not interested in the FIFA 21 player ratings for Huddersfield Town’s squad then that’s fine, just don’t read on. We all know the ratings made up by a video games company don’t have any effect on reality (although I’ll come back to this later) so this article is really just a bit of fun and might be interesting to those people that are curious about how the geeks at EA have rated our current squad. If nothing else, at least its not another article speculating about Karlan Grant's future. In case you’re not familiar with how FIFA works, each player is given an overall rating out of 100 with the likes of Messi and Ronaldo getting scores in the 90s and Bradford City players being in the 40s and ...

Oct72020 by Terrier SpiritNo Comments

4 ex-Huddersfield Town managers in the running to become Barnsley boss

News

Barnsley are on the lookout for a new manager following Gerhard Struber’s exit from the South Yorkshire club to take up the helm at New York Red Bulls. I always like to take a look at the bookies favourites to take over when a manager leaves and I was surprised to see so many people with Huddersfield Town connections among the bookmakers shortlist. Here’s a look at the former Huddersfield Town managers that the bookies are offering odds on to take over at Oakwell and a few of my thoughts about the prospect of these coaches managing Barnsley. David Wagner - 16/1 Things started brightly for Wagner at Schalke in the Bundesliga but he was sacked recently after a terrible run of form that saw him fail to win in 18 games. In his defence, Schalke are rumoured to be poorly run off the pitch an...