Terrier Spirit

Oct72024 by Terrier Spirit6 Comments

The Herbie Kane Soap Opera – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 2-0 win over Barnsley

Matches

What a difference a game can make! After the gloom was starting to gather over Town following four consecutive defeats, the team put in a much-needed display against Barnsley on Saturday, winning 2-0 and deservingly coming out on top. While one game doesn't change everything and the problems we've seen in recent games could still be festering under the surface, this game did feel significant beyond the result and could potentially act as a turning point in the season. It will hopefully mark the end of our poor run and be a transition into a happier spell for Michael Duff and his squad of players. Here are some of my thoughts from the game. Town dominated the first half without getting their reward Like the way heavyweight boxers will probe with their jabs in the early roun...

Oct42024 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

Birmingham show Town how it’s done – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 1-0 defeat to Birmingham City

Matches

Eskimos are thought to have 40 to 50 different words for snow, because they experience so many different varieties of the stuff. Therefore, at this stage in Huddersfield Town's history, Town fans should probably have at least a hundred different words to describe what a defeat feels like. We've become so accustomed to the various feelings that losing a football match can evoke that it makes supporting this football team seem more like an act of penance than something people literally choose to do with their free time for actual entertainment and willingly hand their money over to watch. You would need a deep and crude vocabulary to be able to fully express the number of defeats we've sat through over the years. So the type of defeat Huddersfield Town succumbed to in Birmingham on...

Sep302024 by Terrier Spirit15 Comments

Huddersfield Town sabotage themselves again – Notes on 2-1 defeat to Reading

Matches

Can you imagine having a haircut and saying it was mostly fine but the hairdresser got distracted with the clippers and shaved a chunk out of your ear? Or being really pleased with how an actor has performed in a play apart from the bit where they left that stage to take a personal phone call? Or enjoyed a meal out that was excellent but for the scabby plaster floating in the soup? Can you see where this is going? Huddersfield Town at Reading were much improved compared to recent outings but it counted for nothing because they still, at key moments, couldn't shake the habit of sabotaging themselves. So I'm not in the mood for handing out participation trophies for players that put in a decent shift but let themselves down at crucial moments. As we've seen so much in recent games,...

Sep272024 by Terrier Spirit10 Comments

A limp response – Notes on Town’s defeat to Blackpool

Matches

Huddersfield Town lost to Blackpool on Tuesday night in a defeat that saw them continue their poor form from Saturday's terrible performance against Northampton. While it wasn't quite as bad a showing as the 3-1 drubbing, the lows weren't quite so low, the fact we came into the game hoping to see a positive reaction after a defeat and were served up another plate of hot rubbish from Town made this defeat feel worse. I asked in the title of my post-Northampton article if that game was just a blip. Losing the next game with a lifeless effort from the Terriers suggests there are bigger problems than just a one-off bad day. This article will rake over the goals of another disappointing home display for the Terriers and speculate about what might happen next for Town. More bad goal...

Sep242024 by Terrier Spirit18 Comments

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Blackpool tonight

Matches

Last Saturday was a red letter day for the blog, as I successfully predicted the entire starting XI for Huddersfield Town. Much like a stopped clock is right twice a day, it does occasionally happen that I get the team prediction right but the task was made easier by the fact Town had won the previous game against Bolton by a large margin and the only likely change was forced by injury, with Headely coming in to replace Miller. Today's Town lineup against Blackpool is a much trickier beast to predict though, after near-universal underperformances against Northampton, every position could be up for grabs. But then again, Michael Duff has been fairly faithful to his regular starters so far in his tenure so may stick with his favourites despite the need for change. So here's my pred...

Sep232024 by Terrier Spirit16 Comments

Was it a blip or part of a trend? Notes on Huddersfield Town’s dismal defeat to Northampton

Matches

When a football team stops the opposition from scoring, it's called a clean sheet but there isn't an opposite phrase for when you let goals in. Something like a befouled sheet would be an appropriate wording to use to describe when a team has sabotaged themselves by letting the ball over the line so easily three times in a game. So, against Northampton, Huddersfield Town soiled their sheets in self-destructive fashion. And then, having made the mess, continued to lie in it rather than getting up and sorting out the problem. Putting aside the scatological metaphor, Town's terrible mistakes for the goals were bad enough but I found the limp response to going behind and our inability to stage a comeback until the dying stages, when Northampton started to sit deeper and invited us on t...

Sep212024 by Terrier Spirit14 Comments

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Northampton

Matches

Huddersfield Town take on the Cobblers this afternoon in a game where they're widely tipped to win but anyone who remembers the Shrewsbury and Stevenage games will know that easy wins on paper can be hard work in reality. So despite Huddersfield Town being the odds-on favourites to win today, they are unlikely to have it all their own way and will need to have a gameplan to overcome a team that will set up to stifle and frustrate them. Part of getting the gameplan right will be to pick the correct team for this game. Here’s how I think Town might line up today… Goalkeeper: Lee Nicholls Chris Maxwell continues to be out with his heart issue, so Nicholls will start with Chapman his deputy on the bench, with young Francis Hurl most likely the third choice keeper who will help out w...

Sep182024 by Terrier Spirit7 Comments

Notes on Huddersfield Town’s commanding 4-0 victory over Bolton Wanderers

Matches

Huddersfield Town won 4-0 away at Bolton on Saturday. While it started out as a cagey and closely matched contest, the game ended up as one-sided as you can imagine and Town rubbed their opponent's noses in it with a display of complete dominance in the second half. A slightly unsettling and perplexing experience for a Town fan. We're used to being on the receiving end of these drubbings, not handing them out. But it was weird in a good way and while Bolton were awful once their confidence had evaporated, Town were as good as their opponent was poor and the scoreline is a fair reflection of both sides overall performances. After a run of three defeats before the international break, this game felt significant in terms of Town's momentum. Now, rather than dwelling on a few recent wobble...

Sep142024 by Terrier Spirit16 Comments

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI, Ladapo signing reaction, injury updates and Michael Duff’s pre-Bolton thoughts

Matches

Huddersfield Town are back in action today against Bolton Wanderers. And there may even be a fresh face up front for the Terriers. In this blog post, I'm going to talk about Town's new signing, the laundry list of injury updates that came in the pre-match presser, I'll summarise a few of Michael Duff's other comments ahead of the Bolton game and try to predict the lineup. Here you go… Freddie Ladapo arrives We've signed a striker! Maybe Ladapo isn't quite of the same calibre as Alfie May or Joe Taylor, who we've previously tried to sign, but he's also not the kind of panic buy we've been guilty of in the past after the window has closed. I'd be surprised if he's lumped in with Yaya Sonogo and Oumar Niasse as free agent signings that failed to make an impact. My genera...

Aug302024 by Terrier Spirit6 Comments

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Rotherham

Matches

As, at the time of writing, there was no new striker to do a blogpost about, I thought I might as well write an article about the players Huddersfield Town actually do have on their books. So strap yourself in for a predicted lineup article for our encounter with Rotherham at the New York Stadium. Steve Evans’ men have had a rocky start to life in League One, with one draw and two defeats so far with no goals in any of their opening three league games. But Rotherham-based stats nerds may take some consolation in the fact they top the league's xG table, which suggests they've had the best chances out of all the teams in the league, even though they've failed to finish any of them. I don't know if that means we should fear them or pity them. Obviously, it's likely that getting all ...