Terrier Spirit

Aug132021 by Terrier SpiritNo Comments

A Fulham fan’s preview of tomorrow’s game against Huddersfield Town

Matches

Seb from Fulham fan blog HammyEnd.com has kindly given us a preview of tomorrow's game from a Fulham perspective. You can also read my Huddersfield Town skewed preview over on their blog if you like. What can Huddersfield Town fan's expect to see from Fulham on Saturday? Huddersfield fans can expect to see a team which is defensively very solid, even in the top tier last season we didn’t concede a bucket load of goals, our problems always lied with going forward, which new manager Marco Silva appears to have sorted out. Based on the 90 minutes v Middlesbrough last weekend we seem a lot more inventive going forward then we were under Scott Parker and a team willing to try new things, there’s a lot to be optimistic about already and Marco only arrived a month ago! Who is the p...

Aug102021 by Terrier SpiritNo Comments

5 interesting stats from Huddersfield Town’s draw with Derby

Matches

It’s perhaps too long after the weekend’s game to still be raking over the details, particularly as it was a fairly uneventful match aside from the off-the-field drama that surrounded Town’s encounter with Derby. But after the summer break from Huddersfield Town, it’s good to be back to having games to talk about, so I’ve decided to wring one last article out of this match. Stats in football are divisive among fans, some love them and many are bored to tears. I’m hopeful that those that have clicked on this article are in the former category and are as interested as me in the little stories that emerge when you dig into the numbers produced during Saturday’s match. Sorba Thomas' nine key passes It’s widely acknowledged that Sorba Thomas was the star of the show for Town on Satu...

Aug92021 by Terrier Spirit4 Comments

My dad’s thoughts on the draw with Derby

Matches

In a first for the blog, this article is written by my dad. He's been a Town fan for 60 years and is the reason I'm a fan too. Here are his thoughts on the Derby draw: Bums on seats First of all let me say that it was really good to be back at a real football match at the tidy Pride Park with no crowd restrictions despite fewer bums on seats than might be expected for a season opener. The atmosphere and the noise in and around the stadium made me realise just how much I had missed it over the past 18 months. A patchy affair The match itself was a patchy affair with too many stoppages, especially in the first half, due to a plethora of petty and not so petty fouls and injuries. Both looked like teams that hadn't played together before with passes going astray and goal...

Aug82021 by Terrier Spirit10 Comments

“He just didn’t do enough” – Player ratings for Huddersfield Town’s 1-1 draw at Derby

Matches

It was a very strange start to the Championship season for Huddersfield Town. All the talk earlier this week was about how awful Derby would be and how they can’t put together a team, then it transpired that an unknown number of Town players would be ruled out of the game and we were the ones that might struggle to field a team. In reality, both first elevens were not far off Championship quality and once it kicked off it was a decent contest. Derby weren’t as bad as many expected but the weakened Town team did a reasonable job against them. There were good and bad elements to Town’s game and we’ll definitely face tougher opponents in the upcoming weeks but on balance I thought we did OK and a point is a fair reflection on the game. Here is what I made of each individual perfo...

Aug72021 by Terrier Spirit7 Comments

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to play Derby amid covid testing uncertainty

Matches

I’d hoped that this season may feel a bit like a return to normal but even though fans will be able to watch Town play in the Championship for the first time in an age, the spectre of Coronavirus still looms over today’s match. This may not be the best game to try and pick the likely lineup, as rumours abound about the availability of Town’s first team players and even the coaching staff. Carlos Corberan made some vague statements in his press conference about uncertainty surrounding the results of covid tests that hadn’t been received yet. Perhaps inevitably, since then there have been several unconfirmed reports on Twitter of key players that are likely to miss out today due to having to isolate. I’m not going to repeat specific names of players that are suspected to be positive c...

Aug52021 by Terrier Spirit1 Comment

7 reasons to be pessimistic about Huddersfield Town’s chances this season

Opinion

Yesterday’s article looked at all the reasons to feel positive about Huddersfield Town’s chances this season and by the time I’d finished writing it I’d almost convinced myself that we might be OK this season. So much so that I was tempted to not bother to write a more pessimistic preview of the season. But most Town fans will have experienced the wild mood swings that following can provoke. A decent win on a Tuesday night and you look up the table and think another three more victories could put us in the playoff hunt and then a defeat on the following Saturday leaves you wondering if this sorry team will ever win a match again. So I’m going to indulge my negative side in this article and look at all the reasons why it’s probably best to not expect too much from Huddersfield Town...

Aug42021 by Terrier Spirit7 Comments

6 reasons to feel optimistic about Huddersfield Town’s chances this season

Opinion

The Championship season is due to start on Saturday and it feels about the right time to put together a preview of Huddersfield Town’s chances this time around. As has become a tradition on this blog, I am writing two completely contradictory previews - this is the positive, happy-clappy one. The miserable one will follow later this week. (As an aside, the miserable preview in previous years has usually had over double the number of views as the optimistic one. Which tells you everything you need to know about Town fans!) Regardless of the typically dour outlook of many Town fans, I’m going to try and make a case for why we should feel at least somewhat optimistic about this season. Prepare for the sound of barrels being scraped and levels of optimism that are bordering on sociopathic!...

Aug12021 by Terrier Spirit8 Comments

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Sheffield Wednesday

Matches

Huddersfield Town return to competitive action this afternoon when they take on Sheffield Wednesday at Hillsborough. The South Yorkshire side are now a league below Town, following last season’s relegation but the bookies make them marginal favourites for the game, presumably because they have home advantage and Town’s record in cups in recent years is horrendous. It’s pretty common for clubs to be ambivalent towards the league cup these days but Huddersfield Town seem to take that a step further into open hostility. While most fans would be delighted by the welcome distraction on a cup run, it always feels like the club are desperate to get eliminated at the first opportunity. The fact that this match is taking place today instead of in its usual midweek slot shows that Town ...

Jul282021 by Terrier Spirit14 Comments

Preseason optimism fizzles out at the seaside – Notes on the Fleetwood friendly

Matches

After feeling pretty chipper about Town's prospects after the friendly against Norwich, last night's defeat to Fleetwood caused me to recalibrate my expectations of what to expect from Town. While friendlies don't mean a great deal, the familiarity of Town's failings last night suggests that we're likely to see many of last season's problems repeated in the forthcoming campaign. Here are my thoughts on the game… Naby Sarr isn't as good as Colwill I don't like to single out individual players for criticism but Naby Sarr had a stinker in the first half last night. He got caught in possession all the time, slowed the game down by almost standing on the ball at times (though the options ahead of him weren't always great) and his passing was wayward even by h...

Jul252021 by Terrier Spirit10 Comments

Beauty and the beast, Sorba steps up, grafting midfielders and the usual gripes – Notes on the Norwich friendly

Matches

My cat likes to catch mice and bring them into the house when they're half dead. He'll then play around with them for a while, having great fun while the poor defenseless creature suffers. That's the closest metaphor I can think of to compare our last meeting with Norwich. So it's not a huge surprise to see that most Town fans came away from this game happy to have only lost by two. Norwich were clearly the classier outfit but Town played with a good tempo and unsettled Norwich with our energy and high press. There was good stuff and not so good stuff on display from Town in this game, I'll try to talk about both below. We played some nice football but didn't create enough and made individual errors at the back The above summary of this game could probably apply to around two t...