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 Tuesday night was, on balance, probably one of the more palatable types of loss. Like the best kick in the shin you’ve ever had, it still wasn’t pleasant but it could have been worse. Losing only 1-0 to a team that looks likely to wipe the floor with League One this season is a respectable scoreline, even if it’s a bit galling to see a team that was relegated alongside us make the exact same moves we said we were going to do but doing it with such a lot more conviction (though the level of spending at Birmingham does seem like the kind that historically we’ve seen end in tears).
Anyway, here are a few of my thoughts on the Birmingham game:
A glimpse of what we should have done this season
Comparison is the thief of joy, or so the saying goes. But it was hard not to compare the quality of Birmingham’s passing on Tuesday night as they played football the way we try to, but it was so much more fluid and fast-paced when they did it. Who would have thought that having a team full of better players would lead to a football team that plays better football? Incredible strategy! This may seem like a blindingly obvious point to make, that Birmingham had higher quality players but I didn’t understand quite how large the gap was in quality and the effect that has in the way you can play this kind of game. To mangle the line that Stan Ternent used long ago, Town have been trying to play Champagne football with beer players, whereas Birmingham are the real thing.
Seeing the way that Birmingham’s central defenders and midfielders could ping the ball around the field, particularly the targeted long balls that they continuously bent into the runs of the forwards, really highlighted how limited our own players are in terms of their footballing skills. While we’ve made some inroads into improving the squad over the summer, it’s clear to me that a much deeper level of investment is needed if we aspire to play possession football with anything like the authority Birmingham had against us.
Perhaps Birmingham went a bit bonkers in the transfer market with the business they did in the summer but I think this game highlighted to me that we probably undercooked own investment by a reasonable margin too. While I appreciate the club’s difficulty in the summer rested in the fact we had too many players under contract on Championship wages that don’t put in Championship-level performances. Even still, this game really highlighted the gulf in quality between ourselves and Birmingham. While they may be outliers in terms of their quality in League One, I had started the season hoping Town might not be too far behind them with the exciting brand of football and promising results we’d seen in preseason. Now its October and i can see we are a bog-standard League One team at best, based on the evidence produced on the pitch. Performances need to improve if we want to push for promotion.
The energetic press worked well… until it didn’t
The most enjoyable part of this game from a Town perspective was unquestionably the opening half an hour or so, when we put Birmingham on the back foot with our high-tempo pressing, which stopped them from finding any fluency in possession and lead to some of our better chances. Sadly we snatched at too many shooting opportunities or took on speculative long-range chances rather than trying to work better angles but the intent was good during this spell.
The difficulty came when this approach didn’t bring results for Town and they began to doubt themselves. Or maybe tired legs crept in. Or perhaps Birmingham began to cope more with being pressed and passed around us better. Whatever the reason, the press was less effective and rather than keeping them pinned in their own half for long spells, we either conceded sloppy fouls or their long balls started finding strikers in space. The tactic of pressing high works best when it builds pressure and eventually a mistake comes, but if the trap can be regularly sprung then that pressure is released and it’s no longer the effective tool.
Town still making the same mistakes, despite recent improvement
This game and the Reading game, despite both being defeats, have been clear improvements on the pair of home losses to Blackpool and Northampton. So if you’re the kind of person that thinks losing games in a less embarrassing way is progress, then you’ll be heartened by these two latest performances. I think there are positives to be drawn from these recent games but some concerns still exist too.
In the Birmingham game we were repeatedly cleaved open by their penetrating passing and their chances would sometimes be a result of an excellent move that just deserved applauding rather than being overly critical of Town. However, some of the weaknesses of recent games reared their heads again. Mostly the occasional tendency for the bulk of the team to panic and forget basic things like where they should be stood on the pitch, who they should be marking and that kicking the ball straight to the opposition is usually a bad idea. These mental collapses happened briefly and often we recovered with a last-minute tackle or Birmingham fluffed their lines but the frailties were still on show often enough.
Against a team that had the talent to carve us open, we seemed a bit too willing to expose our soft under belly to them anyway. While playing better football and being organised for all of the 90 minutes of a game would help Town, some more psycholgical toughness in the players on the pitch would help more i think. There are enough old heads in our squad to be able to calm things down when these mad little spells start to kick in and everyone loses their heads. Those with experience need to settle the nerves od those around them and get everyone back orangised when we start to flap.
Looking ahead to Barnsley
The packed recent fixture schedule and my slow writing process has meant that this writeup has come out shortly before Town face their next League One fixture against Barnsley. With Town now losing four games in a row, this feels like one that we need to get something from to stop the downward slump. Having said that, wanting a win and being able to get it are two different things.
There have been signs of improvement lately but there have also been consistent problems on the pitch, as well as a raft of injuries off it, that are hampering Town at the moment. I don’t know which Town will turn up in this game but with us currently sat 15th we need a win, particularly as we are only three points from fourth in the table. So the table is very congested but it won’t stay that way if we keep up this terrible run of form.
Barnsley are doing slightly better than Town but have a similar issue around inconsistency, so could equally be anything from great to awful. While it feels like a while since we had a bit of luck and caught an opponent on an off day, maybe this game will be that day.
Deliberate strategy, TS, to write that much without mentioning a single individual player? Maybe you thought nobody played that badly or they, to a man, played equally badly so why single out individuals?
It’s becoming very hard for you, and others, to write anything new. We’re all getting numbed to being outplayed. So maybe you’ve taken to amusing yourself by reviewing a match without mentioning a single name. At least you can’t be accused of undermining an individual’s fragile confidence. .
It never really occured to me to either heap praise or name and shame any individuals when I was writing this one. I suppose Tom Lees let Standfield get goalside of him for the goal but there were a lot of other things wrong with the build up to the goal too. Not to mention the impact of continually being picked apart leading to these sorts of mistakes being inevitable. I thought Mickel Miller looked very good at times on the positive side of things, even if he should have finished the chance he had in the opening minute of the game. I was worried about Jacob Chapman between the sticks, as I thought he looked nervy coming off his line at times, but he actually had a decent game when it counted and will hopefully grow in confidence now he’s had a couple of games. Broadly speaking though, they were all at a similar level, which was trying hard but falling well short.
You’re right that it’s getting hard to write about Town at the moment, because it’s the same mistakes most games and it feels like watching the team walking into a punch every game. The worrying this is that I’m expecting to see us line up 3-5-2 again today against Barnsley. They will most likely have watched our last few games and know they can put someone with pace in behind either of the wingbacks and get some joy out of our defence. It’s that easy to play against us lately. Maybe the Barnsley game will be a chance to lift the gloom, or at least give me something different to write about!
Great summary as always TS. Thank you.
Disheartening that we are reliant upon our opponents having an off day for us to get anything out of the game but it seems that way at the moment.
Thanks Peter. The old addage is that in a slump you need one to go in off someone’s backside to get you going again. If we could just get the rub of the green it might set us off again and we can put this bad run behind us.
Thanks for the article TS, some food for thought.
As positive as I try to be I think today is a big game and at the very least we need a point with a performance or a win any old how.
I didn’t watch the game only the highlights and interviews but our season wasn’t going to be shaped by Birmingham away. I’m not sure they are quite as better as you say as much as they are on a run of 7 wins and confidence is skyhigh. It’s all easy when the confidence is high.
Also, this loss is bad in the context of 4 in a row and the real damage was Northampton and Blackpool, and a lesser extent Rotherham we were mugged and Reading we should have won. Turn the home games into wins and it is a different picture.
So, today is a big day and i hope the team can get on the front foot and get the crowd onside because if they don’t I see them crumbling again. Interesting comment about the old heads as I think this groups battle scars are a huge part of the problem.
It hopefully starts with a win today and then build on that and get the confidence and momentum going again.
It’s a fair point that Birmingham’s dominance might have been related to the confidence of the two teams. My impression was the biggest difference was the quality of the players but coming into the game on the back of a winning streak rather than a losing one has to make a big difference too. Hopefuly for the reverse fixture we’ll be in better form and will be able to meet them on more equal footing.
I think today is big for Michael Duff because the rumblings for him to go have so far been from the minority of fans that are quick to call for a manager’s head. Five consecutive defeats, regardless of the context surrounding them, will start others to ask questions about Duff too. I think he’ll still be safe but on a bad run like this pressure starts to build. Winning today would take that pressure off and most likely propel us back up the league table too.
Yes agreed.
I’m in favour of taking a really deep breath and giving MD the luxury of time and another transfer window or two because we have had too much churn and change.
But, you can hardly blame people for getting twitchy on such a losing run so the result is important today.
It still really is early days though and in true ‘it’s the hope that kills you’ mode maybe the really good early start over built expectations. If the results had been a bit more WLWLWL I wonder if people would be a bit more measured?
As a Birmingham fan I was expecting this to be a much harder game than it was. In all honesty you could have been 1-0 up in 30 seconds and that was your best chance all game. Our finishing was shocking on the day and I was fully expecting a sucker punch 0-1 after chance after chance was going begging. What a difference the new owners have made as last year we were playing to a half closed stadium with £120m debt and a team of freebies and loans. For us it’s been an absolute whirlwind of a year and it needed a relegation for a complete reset. 21 players left and 17 brought in. An absolutely amazing turnaround. Much is being made of our spending but we sold Sriki Dembele, Koji Miyoshi, Alex Pritchard, Jordan James and Junhino Bacuna for almost £14m. Apart from Stansfield, Klarer, Cochrane and Willumson all the other signings were under £1m. The nett spend was about £8m. I think Huddersfield and Rotherham will both be at the right end of the table along with Charlton, Peterborough, Wrexham and Stockport.
That’s an interesting statistic about 21 out and 17 in and in truth post relegation that is what Huddersfield needed as whilst there is new blood still a lot of the Championship squad remains including key players.
I think Birmingham are a shoo in for top two – and really I mean top one – but it will be interesting to see if there is a dip or blip run somewhere the season.
I still think Town are top six contenders and we will improve as the season goes on but if you read this blog others very much disagree!