Shadow

Opinion

Which loan players might Huddersfield Town recall in January?

Which loan players might Huddersfield Town recall in January?

Opinion, Transfers
Huddersfield Town are currently bottom of the league, riddled with injuries and looking League One in the face. As the club is currently up for sale it seems unlikely there will be a large war chest available for new blood in January, so another potential source of fresh faces  could be to recall some of our youngsters who are currently out on loan. I thought it might be interesting to take a look to see which of the crop of loanees might be interesting to Mark Fotheringham, based on a combination of their stats for their loans so far and the gaps in the current Town squad. Here’s what I’ve found out…  Ryan Schofield On loan at: Hibs Level: SPL Games played: 0 WhoScored.com average rating: N/A Stats: Number of times he’s warmed the bench: 9 He was signe...
Why I’m worried about Dean Hoyle putting Huddersfield Town up for sale

Why I’m worried about Dean Hoyle putting Huddersfield Town up for sale

News, Opinion
Dean Hoyle announced yesterday that he is going to step back from the day-to-day running of the football club and will look to find someone to buy the club. This news was coupled with the announcement of a new managing director, Dave Baldwin, that will take over the work Dean was doing as the club’s figurehead and who will be in charge of the search for a new buyer of the club. I’ve seen some fans celebrate this news and act as though this can only be a good thing for the club but I’m far less optimistic. While there’s a possibility that things could work out well down the line, I’m a bit concerned. In this article I’ll talk about a few of the things that worry me about this new development… The takeover between Phil and Dean has still not been officially concluded Unless I missed...
Who was the last Huddersfield Town boss to win their first game? – The new manager bounce is a myth

Who was the last Huddersfield Town boss to win their first game? – The new manager bounce is a myth

News, Opinion
Mark Fotheringham takes charge of his first game as Huddersfield Town head coach tomorrow afternoon and I suspect many Reading fans will fear that we will be beneficiaries of the famous new manager bounce. However, my instinct was that Huddersfield Town never seem to get good results straight away under new managers and we usually have to wait at least a little while before getting their first win. To see if I was right I waded through the record books (not really, I just looked it up online) and found I was right - new managers, or head coaches, have lost their first game in charge going back for a very long time.  Here’s a quick rundown of just how far back you have to go in Huddersfield Town history before you’ll find a Huddersfield Town boss who actually won their first game in...
What kind of head coach will Mark Fotheringham be?

What kind of head coach will Mark Fotheringham be?

Opinion, Tactics
Mark Fotheringham has been appointed Huddersfield Town’s new head coach. He is the fifth of Town’s last six managerial appointments to come with no significant experience of being the head coach of a men’s football team. In fairness, gambling on inexperience has paid off half of the time in the past, with Wagner and Corberan both overperforming with limited resources. But we’ve also seen Siewert and Schofield crash and burn too. So we know how much of a gamble it is to let someone take their first steps into management at Championship level, where the games come thick and fast with no margin for error or time to learn on the job.  Because Mark Fotheringham hasn’t worked as a permanent head coach anywhere previously, we don’t have anything to go on in terms of his track record. So i...
Should David Wagner return to Huddersfield Town?

Should David Wagner return to Huddersfield Town?

News, Opinion
Danny Schofield has gone. I was going to write a blogpost about it but I don’t think there’s any point as everyone already knows the talking points: he’s a nice guy, he was out of his depth and he probably shouldn’t have been given it in the first place. There’s not much point dragging that out to 1,000 words of waffle. It’s a genuine shame it didn’t work for Schofield but after nine games and only one (fortunate) win it was pretty clear that things were only going one way.So now we must look to the future and consider who will replace Schofield. The bookmakers think they know, as David Wagner is the odds on favourite, though it might not be quite as straightforward as that. For starters, I can’t see how Wagner would agree to working under a Head of Football like Leigh Bromby. A central th...
Thoughts on Huddersfield Town’s transfer ins and outs, defeat to Bristol City and their crucial game against Blackpool

Thoughts on Huddersfield Town’s transfer ins and outs, defeat to Bristol City and their crucial game against Blackpool

Matches, Opinion, Transfers
I’ve always thought that if you’re scrambling around on transfer deadline day to get your business done then you’ve done something wrong. So maybe we shouldn’t be quite so delighted with the flurry of activity that Town saw at Canalside on Thursday as the deadline approached. Three new players came through the door as even more were ushered out on loan.  In this article I’ll work my through the various deals that took place and then summarise a few of my thoughts on the defeat to Bristol City. I think the transfer news is probably more important than the defeat now, as the game has passed now and is probably not one Town fans want to spend a lot of time thinking about and at least the signings offer a little bit of hope! Michal Helik on a permanent deal from Barnsley I think this ...
What’s going wrong with Huddersfield Town? 7 potential reasons

What’s going wrong with Huddersfield Town? 7 potential reasons

Matches, Opinion
There's something wrong at Huddersfield Town this season. We've lost our first three games, which wouldn’t be horrendous on its own but the manner of the defeats and the way the team have been playing during those games alongside events off the pitch all point towards some rising concerns among Town fans.  So rather than a preview article for tomorrow’s game against Stoke I’m going to try and dig into the possible reasons why Huddersfield Town are so bad at the moment. To save you from disappointment before you get too far, I don’t have the answers, you won’t finish this article with a neat, 5-point plan about exactly how to fix Huddersfield Town’s problems. Instead, I’m going to go over all the things I can think of that might be contributing to the problems and consider how much ...
We’re doomed! 6 reasons to feel pessimistic about Huddersfield chances this season

We’re doomed! 6 reasons to feel pessimistic about Huddersfield chances this season

Opinion
After getting your hope up with my optimistic preview yesterday, it's time to bring you back down to Earth with a thunk with my pessimistic look ahead to Huddersfield Town's 22/23 Championship season.  If you're anything like the typical Town fan you'll feel much more at home among the misery and cynicism anyway. Those rare moments of success feel bewildering and almost threatening, much better the familiar and almost comforting gloom that tends to gather over Town Dan's faces when the subject of our club's fates come up. You don't have to be miserable to be a Town fan but it helps!  I'm exaggerating but it does sometimes feel like it's better to expect the worst with Huddersfield Town so then at least it's not a surprise I'd things end badly. While we have had our moments ...
6 reasons to feel optimistic about Huddersfield Town’s prospects this season

6 reasons to feel optimistic about Huddersfield Town’s prospects this season

Opinion
We’re just a couple of days away from the new season starting so I thought I’d look ahead to what we have in store. Rather than try to write one balanced season preview article I’ve split my personality in two and written one that is completely miserable and one that is much more positive. This is the happy clappy, pollyanna one, that looks towards the sunny side of the street and tries to squeeze the positives out of our current situation. The negative preview will be out later. As an interesting aside, I’ve done this double preview approach over the last few seasons and the negative article usually gets about twice as many views as the positive one. So the next time you complain about how miserable the media are you should really blame yourself for clicking all that negative bile rath...
Predicted 22/23 Championship table 

Predicted 22/23 Championship table 

Opinion
It seems like an act of pointless vanity to try and predict the league table before a ball has been kicked but it’s also a bit of fun and passes the time while we wait for the big kickoff on Friday. So here are my thoughts on what I think will happen in the Championship this season.  Feel free to bookmark this post and come back to it in May next year when none of my predictions have come true so you can laugh at me. Then again, by May 2023 the robot uprising may well have taken place and we’ll no doubt look back with teary-eyed nostalgia at the times when we had the opportunity to think about football rather than spend every waking moment working for our robot masters. Anyway, on with the predictions! The top two - Norwich and Middlesbrough Norwich are pretty boring at this ...