After the otherworldliness of the victory over Swansea, Town came back down to Earth with a bump against Derby. Just over 48 hours after a victory that had fans daring to dream this season could have a boring, midtable finish, Town were back to all the bad habits that had left them drifting down the table and towards the drop zone.
If someone wanted to know what went wrong for Town this season they could watch this game to see just about every issue that’s blighted Town’s play with predictable regularity. Throwing away a lead is the only square that went unmarked in Huddersfield Town 2021 Bingo. All the other favourites were there: silly mistakes at the back, tepid build up play, spurned chances, being out muscled at set pieces, persisting with failing tactics and injuries to key players.
I almost didn’t write this article because following Town is so grim right now but I’ve gone ahead with it in the hopes I can get it out of my system and onto your screen. With the exception of last Saturday, it’s becoming very hard to enjoy watching Town, which is in direct contradiction to the rationale of binning off the Cowleys and bringing in Carlos.
Schofield’s struggles continue
If the transfer window opened now rather than in January I think there’s very little chance we’d have sold Hamer and replaced him with a cheaper backup keeper (who may be great but clearly isn’t of the same calibre of Hamer). At the time it seemed sensible to use the rest of this season to bed in Schofield, in preparation for him being our number one next season because we seemed to be coasting to a midtable finish.
Schofield’s form and confidence has been in steady decline since Hamer left and it’s getting hard to defend the young keeper. I want him to be a success, after years of hearing about his potential it felt like this was the season we’d see him establish himself as our main keeper. If anything there are more doubts about him now than there were at the start of the season.
Against Derby he was literally an accident waiting to happen and relatively simple crosses saw him look a bundle of nerves. The first goal may be mostly Fraizer Campbell’s fault for not clearing the ball but it wouldn’t have been an issue if Schofield had just come out and claimed the initial cross.
Opposition teams are targeting him now and I’m not sure it’s beneficial to him in the long term or the team in the short term to keep him as the first choice. If Leutwiler is anything like capable of playing in our system then give him a run and let Schofield rebuild his confidence and work intensively in training on commanding his area and collecting crosses. Currently he’s more wary of crosses than Count Dracula and it’s costing the team.
I still see Schofield as the long term answer to our goalkeeper problems but he’s looking like he’s suffering at the moment and resting him may be the kindest thing to do, not to mention that it will remove an obvious weakness in our team.
Derby did exactly what they needed to
I was critical of Wayne Rooney as a manager before the game but I have to give him credit for his tactics on Tuesday. He has set Derby up as a well-organised unit in defence and exploited our weakness at set pieces.
While it’s not exactly rocket science to beat Huddersfield Town these days, Derby were compact enough at the back to make our attacks almost completely ineffective. They also knew to let our defenders have the ball and eventually they would make a mistake that gifts them a goal-scoring opportunity.
I was actually moderately impressed with Debry. They’re not a top Championship side but compared to the basket case team we saw come to the John Smith’s, this team looked like the kind of functional but unimpressive Championship teams that usually hover just outside the playoffs. On that basis, I think they’re very likely to pull clear of the relegation scrap and Town have one fewer relegation rivals to hope are worse than them.
Carlos continues to be outfoxed by rival managers
Injuries and underinvestment restrict Corberán’s ability to make changes in games but even considering this issue, he didn’t respond well enough to the situation on the pitch.
After a decent opening to the match the momentum slowly swung away from Town and never returned. The defence didn’t move the ball out quickly enough, the midfield couldn’t find any gaps in Derby’s defence and the forwards didn’t create anything although they didn’t get much service.
The subs Derby brought on at halftime compounded Town’s problems and none of the changes we made helped either break down their stubborn defence or made us less vulnerable to counter attacks. The persistence with three at the back seemed to be daft when we could have swapped a defender for someone more creative as the second half saw Town huffing and puffing but failing to make any penetration of their defence.
This was mostly the same team that blew Swansea away – what changed?
The obvious answer to why Town were great against Swansea but shoddy against Derby is mostly because of the opponent. Swansea left gaps at the back for us to exploit and allowed us to play through them. Derby were more compact and we didn’t have the ability to break them down.
There was also a huge difference in individual performances. Lewis O’Brien reverted to his current season form after showing his full potential against the Swans. Bacuna slowed down every attack he was involved in and seems to be more interested in drawing fouls than beating men these days. Holmes couldn’t get any joy out of Derby either. Aaron Rowe was probably the most threatening player for Town but he was too quick to cut onto his right when attacking and became predictable and tended to run infield and into traffic.
I’m not going to use fitness as an excuse for this performance as Derby had a game last weekend too (though on Friday, so they had an extra day to recover). If the murderball regime is so intense, we are at the stage of the season where those that haven’t been crocked by the training should be at maximum fitness and running our opponents ragged. There was little evidence of superior fitness on Tuesday night. If anything we seemed to fizzle out towards the end of the game.
How can Town turn it around?
Around Christmas time Town fans were broadly happy with the team’s progress but frustrated with the inconsistency that saw us win one game and lose the next. Now we would all be more than happy to go back to that pattern as it would produce the wins we need to get to safety.
There are lots of problems with this Town team and some can’t be fixed until the squad is overhauled in the summer. Until then Carlos needs to find a way to get the four or five wins we need to retain our Championship status.
Danny Cowley, when he reached the run in and saw we needed points desperately, regardless of the manner we attained them, resorted to negative tactics to grind out the required points. Carlos almost certainly won’t take this path as changing the style of play was as much a goal for him this season as the results on the pitch.
Instead he needs to make this approach work against teams that defend deep and are well organised. Those are the opponents we struggle to break down and where we’ve got the most ground to improve.
Getting better at the basics might help, as it would make Town harder to beat. Being better drilled at set pieces and cutting out sloppy errors in possession should be a priority because we are currently really bad in these areas. It’s the kind of thing you don’t expect professional footballers to struggle with but currently we’re making countless errors in every game. So beyond tactics, formations, systems and the more cerebral side of coaching, we just need players to stop doing stupid things.
Getting players back from injury could also be a lifeline for the team. If Koroma, Mbenza and Aarons were all fit and at their best it would mean we’d actually have enough quality players to be able to have some on the bench to impact the game late on. Rather than the current situation where half crocked players and undercooked youth team players come off the bench and struggle to make an impact.
After a defeat like the Derby game it feels impossible to see how Town can possibly win games but ten elevenths of the starting lineup on Tuesday had played some lovely stuff against Swansea last weekend. And if we had defended crosses better and not allowed a counter attacking goal from our own corner then Derby wouldn’t have had that many clear cut chances. I’m not arguing that the result wasn’t fair but if we had just been a bit better in key moments then we could have kept ourselves in that game for longer and then we may have had more opportunity to score.
A good and fair assessment Terrier.
Well for someone with a reluctance to comment you have gone into great, worthwhile detail – well done!
My overall emotion is bafflement at the confusion on the pitch, our poor level of basic play and the fact that we can’t rehearse strategies to elude the press; the possession stats at the back look good on paper but that’s all.
I think it’s safe to say that was a very, very poor performance apart from the first fifteen minutes or so. Rowe, Vallejo and Pipa could be described as giving average performances at best. The rest should be condemned for their application and resolve.
Marking, passing and urgency of purpose woefully lacking, the substitutions mindless, offering similar or worse to what preceded their arrival
The closing stages volunteered shambolic offerings, no-one appeared to know what they were supposed to be doing; Derby, if they lost possession were given the ball back immediately, in general play it felt like they had three or more extra players on the pitch.
Given the positives from the last match, this was mystifying and extremely worrying. The last result seemingly an outlier – hope not!
I wonder what the decision makers within the club think of their processes as the season unravels and League 1 beckons yet again, what a disservice to those 18000, now 11000 season card holders.
An excellent summary, I fully agree.
Having been a Cowley advocate and appalled at their dismissal, I don’t think we would be in this position had they stayed. I support Corberan out of loyalty to Town and what he is trying to achieve, but, like you say, I think he will stick to his principles.All good teams build upon a solid defence and being difficult to beat, which we have not done and we are struggling against high balls into the box, particularly from set pieces.
We do not have a plan B like high balls in the box as we haven’t had anyone like Mounie to challenge and win them. Sagono might just do, depending when he is fit enough to play but could be too little too late.
I think murderball has resulted in so many fitness issues as the training methods under Lee Clark also did.
You don’t mention much about that second goal. Easy to castigate hard working Campbell for getting the first one wrong in his eagerness to be helpful.
Talk about their second goal please. Why were we so wide open as to let Waghorn (of all people) scamper through that yawning gap between (apparently) three central defenders? Why do you think our defensive performance has declined so disastrously since Schindler’s injury? Does it have anything to do with the injury to our best player?How can we resolve the matter. Who’s job is it to organise us at the back? We have at least four putative replacements for one injury Elphick, Keogh, Sarr and Stearman. And then there’s the youngster you rate so highly. Do any of these hold the answer for the rest of this season? If not, I agree there is not much to be done about it. But it doesn’t augur well for next year.
I’d be interested to hear your views. Cheers.
And we always predicted that Corberan would find it difficult to make his principles pay off once we were in a relegation dogfight with players lacking motivation and confidence. Do you think he has the pragmatism necessary to get us out of this hole? The Cowley’s certainly did.
It maybe a good idea to rest Schofield getting all the comments he’s getting can’t be good for his confidence could make him more nervous , trouble is who do you replace him with . Personally for me I would play Preston N E with a 442 system but that depends on certain players being available and the ridiculous Injury situation. 442 system would keep more sold and keep a tighter ship not loose is a must .
Good column again terrier, I agree with you about Derby they looked good & well organised the difference between CC & Rooney as they are both young managers is Rooney has some very useful experience upstairs in Steve McLaren who helps him out something that maybe we should look at getting CC some assistance, I don’t understand why the 3at the back is a such a problem & his reluctance to play three central defenders, Tuesday was more of a 4-5-1 we were really all over the place it was awful & painful to watch the whole team didn’t know what they were doing, CC needs to watch the game back & look at how derby played with a proper 3 he may learn from it classic 3 centre halves one sweeping & a holding midfielder sat in front, a solid platform then everyone else can push forward you then have the chance to change things from their, again like derby, we lost one player from Saturday & instead of leaving things that worked and tried to just replace Hogg he moved everybody around, what he is doing to Schofield is poor it’s obvious his confidence is shot and needs to be left out, CC is a keeper as well, I’m still gutted after Tuesday & not really sure the new signing will help if we cannot stop what’s happening, get someone in with some experience to help out that’s all I can suggest sorry for the doom & gloom
I agree with everything summarized above, and would expand on your comments about being muscled out at set pieces, by suggesting that apart from Hogg, Valleho and Sarr, we seem to be muscled out of most 50-50 challenges and lack a real strength and steeliness throughout the team. In comparison to Derby – who fell over at will and gained many free kicks that were unjustified from a weak ref – we were pushed around and the likes of Holmes, Duhaney, Mbenza, Brown and Rowe, whilst seemingly having lots of skill, seem lightweight in comparison. However this is not new, watch back the highlights from the recent Swansea and Middlesbrough games if you can, and you’ll see that throughout the team, we are not strong physically and are often unable to match the physicality of other championship players. This is bound to cause us problems right up to the end of the season, because unfortunately you can’t make hard men out of the current bunch of players with 2 months or so of the season to go. Pleased that we have signed Yaya Sanogo who seems to be a more physically capable player – but only time will tell if he can get fit and play a few games – if he does he may attract attention from defenders or create extra space around him because of his stature. Very worrying times for us, and whilst Swansea was enjoyable, we need 5 or 6 more of those results before we can start to look forward to Championship status next season, and can’t see where they will come from yet – but hope that I’m badly wrong. A good result at Preston – another physical team – may set the tone for the rest of the season and I sincerely hope so. Most of all I hope that Mr Hodgkinson, has learned from this season’s dreadful transfer windows, and understands that – for the most part – you get what you pay for. Unfortunately it may take dropping to League One for that to be fully understood. Like all true Town fans I would fear for our very existence as a Football Club if that happened.
A feeling of deja vu. Young players not being physical enough, doesn’t that remind anyone of the last time we plunged down the leagues? Schofield’s keeping is the stuff of nightmares but not helped at times by defenders taking turns in making a stupid mistake. He needs a rest as well as Campbell and possibly Saar. The arrival of Sanogo may help, but my wife is an Arsenal supporter and summed up his signing in two words. Oh dear!
I think you’re spot on regarding Schofield: everybody can see that he’s got great potential and want him to succeed. And it’s also clear that he already is a top class shot-stopper with amazing reflexes. However, his self-confidence now definitely is down in the basement and he looks like a guy who needs a rest, both for his own sake and for the sake of the team. Not daring to go for the crosses and try to dominate your air space is a very clear sign of a keeper lacking confidence. For Schofield, it’s certainly also an effect of inexperience, which contributes to bad decision making: he stays on his line way too much – and when he leaves it, it’s at the wrong moment.
Still, that’s only part of his problems. Another is lack of strength and ruthlessness. An experienced keeper would *never* let himself be closed down as Schofield was on the corner before the first goal. You have to muscle yourself free (and if the keeper tries to do that but fails, he’ll almost certainly get a free-kick).
But: The main problem for Schofield is probably his command of the defence. It can be that we miss this on Ifollow, but it seems to me that he’s not the vocal guy telling he’s defenders where to be, which really is what a GK has to do (a case to the point is the “wall” he put up against Swansea’s free-kick). It wouldn’t be such a major problem with some more experienced defenders on the pitch (say a Schindler or at least a Stearman; Keogh should be able to do it to, but clearly doesn’t), but without them, an experienced and vocal keeper would be key. And Schofield isn’t that guy (yet), so give him a rest and bring Leutwiler in.
Unfortunately, I don’t think that will happen: In the preview show before the Boro game, Clements even said straight to Leutwiler’s face that he wouldn’t get any chance to play unless Schofield got injured. No matter what else. Leutwiler certainly knew what he signed up for, but it was still a shocking way to break down any motivation your back-up GK might have.
It was hardly managerial genius on Rooney’s part. Derby set themselves up almost comically with three straight lines: 5 players just outside their own penalty area, 3 around the middle of their own half, and 2 just inside the halfway line. As soon as a Terrier had the ball inside Derby’s half, he had two Rams on him (sometimes three). That should’ve left openings somewhere else on the pitch, but Town completely failed to spot those gaps, which tells me a) that they consistently move the ball way too slowly, b) that the players off the ball fail to run into the right spaces, and c) that they don’t have the players on the ball who are creative enough to look for those openings (maybe except for Vallejo; Sarr tries to hit some through-balls, but almost always fails when doing so).
I like Corberán’s ideas, but unless Town can up their tempo and creativity, they’ll keep getting nothing out of games like this one: they’ll fail to score, while the opponents are pretty much destined to score at least once (at least after a defensive mistake or a set piece), unless Town start playing a lot safer at the back (i.e., more boring).
We look a very poor side Schofield is a nervous wreck at the back Keoagh is past his sell by date too slow everytime a forward gets near saar they turn him and nine times out of ten they score why do are midfielders and Forwards get outside opponents box then instead of having a shot pass the ball back to halfwayline to the back four to play out wide and start trying to get the ball back were it already was boring inafective football for me we are down CC has to go no renuel of season card for me PH sacked the Cowleys because he wanted a new style of football well hes got it and probabley relegation PH has invested no money in this Squad and its backfired he will get hell when crowds return and his puppet Bromby and Hoyle is not innocent in all this what sort of chairman wants back everypenny he invested no Town fan to me then he hands picks PH Get out of my club and take LB with you
First I would change “I still see Schofield as the long term answer to our goalkeeper problems” to “I can’t see Schofield as the long term answer to our goalkeeper problems”. You mention the overhaul in the Summer. Do you really expect PH and his cronies to operate any differently. No it’ll be cheap cheap cheap. As for the team. they have obviously lost confidence in Corberans way of playing and the are constantly looking at the touchline only to find a wild man leaping about and screaming out unintelligible instructions.
I can just about take defeat from a good side when your own players have given everything and where the goals scored against you are from good attacking play rater than defensive error. Why this defeat was such a horror show was because none of those boxes were ticked. Derby aren’t a particularly good side, some Town players threw in the towel well before the end and the 2 goals, not for the first time, were a direct consequence of defensive mistakes.
Until we stop giving away goals, the slide will continue. And, as I’ve been saying for weeks, that means changing the goalkeeper. Schofield isn’t getting better; he’s getting worse. I feel quite sorry for whichever defenders we pick; they can’t have any confidence in their keeper and that must have an adverse effect on the defenders. If we can stop the defensive errors, there is a chance that we might score the odd goal and get out of jail.
Well said Simon, you can have all the centre forwards in the the world, but with a goalkeeper like ours, a back four or three or whatever and a CF who gives the ball away in his own pen.area, we might as well as be planning for Lg1 now. I dont know the answer with the players we have, but would have thought CFs were the last players to look at, I have said all along the problems at Town start at No1, our defence is a joke, I realise that Carlos wants to play the football that beat Swansea, but we need more quality and steel at the back, how many times have we scored first and lost. nuff said.
Town need 14 points from 14 matches to attain the magic 50 points (and safety?). That’s 5 wins and 9 loses or 4 wins + 2 draws and 8 loses. Doesn’t seem that difficult………………….!!
You are performing a valuable public service, sacrificing precious hours of your life watching and analysing these games in such depth.
That’s very kind of you to say Andrew. I must say that I’m disappointed that I’ve yet to be acknowledged by the Pride of Britain Awards for having to watch and write about Town this season 😂.