Huddersfield Town have lost their four previous Premier League games prior to Brighton’s visit to the John Smith’s Stadium this weekend. This is one of the few games we’ll have all season where we’re the bookies’ favourite to win the match. These are two reasons why the game on Saturday is huge.
A win against Brighton can change our momentum
Last season playing Brighton was one of the most daunting prospects Town faced. Despite Brighton having invested significantly in their team since then, they now represent one of the least scary prospects now we’re in the Premier League.
Playing Brighton at home means we’ve got a chance to play our own game more, and spend less time worrying about the opposition. Over the last few games, there’s been less evidence of the Terrier Spirit style of football that Town played to get promoted because we were up against top-class opposition. I expect Wagner to go back to the formation and tactics that he’s famous for: heavy metal football.
Beating Brighton won’t just make us three points closer to survival, it’ll also give us a huge boost in confidence going into the busiest run of games in the season.
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A poor result against Brighton would be a big blow
On the other side of the coin, if we don’t get anything out of the Brighton game it’s five games in a row we’ve lost with Chelsea next to play. It’s hard for any team to lose that many consecutive games, even if some of them have been against teams we don’t expect to beat.
To lose to a team that we should have a chance of beating would be a further blow to the fragile confidence within Town right now. David Wagner is good at getting his players pumped up before a game, but recently the players have looked dejected in some of the games we’ve lost.
It’s a chance to recreate the performance last time we played Brighton
Last season’s 3-1 victory over Brighton at home was Town’s best performance under David Wagner. We played Brighton off the park that night and completely dominated the game. It was a perfect example of the brand of football Wagner wants his team to play and I’m sure he’ll want to see the same thing happen again on Saturday.
Wagner was quick to point out that this game is different to the last meeting at the John Smith’s Stadium. Privately he must also see this game as an opportunity to get his team back into the kind of form they showed the last time they played Brighton.
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We need to get points on the board
Right now the league table is tightly packed. Four points separate eleventh and seventeenth in the table, so a few wins could catapult us up and into being comfortably mid-table. If we lose the next three games then mid-table will start to look further and further away.
I fully expected Town to be fighting at the bottom end of the table this season, but given that things are packed tightly in the bottom half it wouldn’t take a lot to pull clear of the relegation dogfight. Being comfortable in the table will take a bit of pressure away and mean we can express ourselves more freely, and not worry too much about the odd bad result.
It’s a big game, but it’s not “must-win”
So I’ve banged on in this article about why this game is very important, but I completely disagree that it’s a “must-win game” for Town, as I’ve heard others describe it. This is a figure of speech which has increased in popularity over the last few years, mostly by broadcasters trying to artificially crank up the tension.
It would be good to break our losing streak, great to see a strong Town performance, and climbing up the league table will settle the nerves a bit. But we’re not finished if we lose this game. Far from it.
We’re guaranteed to be at least two points clear of the relegation zone regardless if we lose, possibly still five if Palace lose to Bournemouth. It’s another winnable fixture, but we’ll be OK if we don’t win.