Terrier Spirit

Jul212021 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

Huddersfield Town’s latest signing could hint towards future transfer plans

Transfers

Huddersfield Town signed Jon Russell for their B Team following his release from Chelsea earlier this summer. Despite being on loan at Accrington Stanley last season and playing first team football in League One he will initially start off in Jon Worthington's B Team rather than going straight into the first team. This acquisition might hint at the long-term plan to use the B Team to bed in players rather than spending money on established players that are ready for the first team. A bit like buying green bananas and ripening them yourself rather than buying ones that are ready to eat. Since Town revamped their youth system and got rid of their younger academy age groups they have relied on recruiting players from other club's academies but it's unusual for them to bring in playe...

Jul192021 by Terrier Spirit10 Comments

Thoughts on the new boys, familiar concerns, players MIA and encouraging signs – Notes on the Southport friendly

Matches, News

After a few months of post-season rest I thought it might be useful to write an article about yesterday's friendly against Southport. At this stage in the season it's more about getting a few hundred words in the tank and getting back up to full blogging fitness. So don't expect anything too insightful or interesting from this article, I'm just trying to work my way back up to the, admittedly low, standards that I usually reach. And my lack of match fitness was abundantly clear when the first half literally sent me to sleep and I missed all of half time and the start of the second half. So apologies if the first ten minutes of that half completely contradicted the rest of the 90, I suspect it was more of the same but it could have featured Lewis O'Brien riding a pink elephant and Carl...

May102021 by Terrier Spirit16 Comments

Huddersfield Town’s predicted retained list – who should stay and who will go?

Transfers

Huddersfield Town limped to the end of the season with a tepid draw against Reading. I can't tell you much more about it than that as I didn't bother watching the game. Instead I had a pub lunch in a soggy beer garden which was infinitely more entertaining. Now the season is over the first bit of business will be for Town to announce which players in the current squad will be offered new deals and which ones will be leaving the club. Here are my predictions. New deals Romoney Crichlow This first one is cheating a bit as he's already posted on social media about how he's looking forward to playing for Town next season. Arguably he's at an age where he needs regular first team football and Rarmani Edmonds-Green's success may limit his chances as we won't want to play...

May52021 by Terrier Spirit14 Comments

Lewis O’Brien to Newcastle – A Huddersfield Town fan’s view on the rumoured transfer

Transfers

There have been numerous reports recently linking Huddersfield Town's Lewis O'Brien with a move to Newcastle United in the upcoming transfer window. I thought it to might be interesting to offer a Huddersfield Town fan's perspective to this potential move. O'Brien was last season's player of the year for Huddersfield Town and has played more minutes this season than most other members of the squad despite missing the opening month and a bit of the season due to injury. What are Lewis O'Brien's strengths? I think one of the best things about O'Brien is that he's such a hard-working player. Running stats are closely guarded by the club but I'd wager he covers more ground than the majority of players in any given game. His relentless running helps when attacking as he provides ov...

May42021 by Terrier Spirit15 Comments

Baffling formations, repeating mistakes, dissecting their goal, limping over the line and thinking about summer – Notes on Town’s 1-1 draw with Coventry

Matches, Opinion

It's a couple of days since Town's 1-1 draw with Coventry and it's already a struggle to remember anything of great consequence from the game. Despite this season being exceptional for off the pitch reasons, we had to sit through another unexceptional Town performance where a point was a little bit fortunate. All the usual problems reared their head during the game and it was only results elsewhere that guaranteed Town's safety. In previous seasons beating the drop had been something to celebrate but this time it's slightly embarrassing as it doesn't feel like we deserve to survive after a woeful 2021. Playing three or four different formations at once Could you confidently say what the formation was for Town on Saturday? I was preoccupied by this question for long sp...

May12021 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

Predicted lineup, score and key talking points for Huddersfield Town v Coventry

Matches

Today is the penultimate game of Huddersfield Town's season and hopefully the day we can cast aside our relegation fears and hope for a better season next time around. If Town beat Coventry today then we've cleared the admittedly low bar of avoiding the drop or, more likely, we may fail to win and still survive because Derby and/or Rotherham fail to win their games. Here's a preview of today's game. Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Coventry Goalkeeper: Schofield Defence: Pipa, Edmonds-Green, Sarr, Toffolo Midfield: Hogg, O'Brien, Eiting Attack: Rowe, Ward, Koroma It's hard to predict how different today's lineup will be. Carlos was emphatic in his press conference that he won't treat this game as an opportunity to experiment with his lin...

Apr252021 by Terrier Spirit30 Comments

Repeating mistakes, rotten attitudes, unfit players and legitimate doubts about the head coach – Notes on Town’s humiliating defeat to Blackburn

Matches

Huddersfield Town fell to another humiliating defeat yesterday, this time to Blackburn. While 5-2 might not look as bad as the 7-0 battering we received from Norwich, in many ways this game was worse. The bulk of Norwich's goals came from excellent play but yesterday we were the architects of our downfall, as we made mistake after mistake and got the tactics completely wrong. Blackburn were good but we gave them a very easy afternoon's work. Weirdly, the other results mean Town are now almost certainly safe barring a very unlikely sequence of results. Few fans are in celebratory mood though as another dysfunctional performance means there are genuine questions to be asked about the competence of the Head Coach and the grand plan that we brought in last season as the justification...

Apr242021 by Terrier Spirit6 Comments

Predicted lineup, score and four questions for Huddersfield Town’s trip to Blackburn

Matches

Town have now played their last midweek game of the season and only have games today and the following two Saturdays before we can all do our best to pretend this season never happened. Today's trip to Blackburn is the final game of a sequence of seven games in three weeks for the Terriers so there's a ready-baked excuse for a subdued performance today. However, if Town can get a win out of this game we can "celebrate" that we've retained our Championship status one game earlier than last season. While that's the kind of progress you need a microscope to inspect, at least those nagging fears of relegation can be put to bed. A defeat will leave us nervously looking at the results of the teams below us. Anyway, here are my thoughts in this game: Predicted Huddersfield T...

Apr212021 by Terrier Spirit2 Comments

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Barnsley tonight

Matches

I'm running a bit late with this post, so imagine there's an introduction here. Then scroll down to read the meat of the article. Cheers. Goalkeeper: Ryan Schofield A stat came out yesterday that said Schofield has made more saves from shots in the 6 yard box than any keeper in the top four divisions of English football. And he wasn't even first choice until after Christmas. It's a slightly odd stat but it does show that he's very good at reflex saves. The less instinctive side of his game is slowly coming along too and I think he's going to go from strength to strength now he's broken into the starting eleven and had a decent run iof Championship games. https://twitter.com/playmaker_EN/status/1384516368435929092?s=19 Defence: Edmonds-Green, Keogh, Sarr, O'Brien The big...

Apr192021 by Terrier SpiritNo Comments

Rebooting the game with dreary possession, taking chances, sloppy errors and survival maths – Notes on Town’s 2-0 victory over Forest

Matches

Town's win over Nottingham Forest settled many Town fans' nerves at the weekend. It doesn't guarantee safety but it's a huge stride towards it. There were good things and bad things in the match but ultimately, Town took their chances and Forest didn't, and that was the main difference between two fairly poor sides. Here are a few of my thoughts on the match. We could have been out of the game in the first 20 minutes Town were really bad in the opening stages of this game. We played like we were half asleep for twenty minutes and could easily have conceded two or three goals purely from silly mistakes at the back. I'm not completely sure what the problem was. I think nerves came into it, as the players looked scared and that made many play with...