Credit to Burnley, Schofield’s short honeymoon, old problems, future hope, transfer moves and perspective – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s defeat to Burnley

After all the weeks of anticipation, the shine of the new season was quickly worn away in a first half against Burnley which saw Huddersfield Town passed off the park by a team that were supposed to be in the middle of a huge change in philosophy that meant they would be a bit of a mess but in fact they looked calm, composed and full of confidence. Town, despite fielding a starting eleven without a single new signing, looked lost, disjointed and couldn’t get out of their own half for long periods of a truly dismal first half. 

Thankfully the second half offered a little more hope as the coaching team showed a bit of tactical knowhow, the players a bit of fight and the new boys on the bench added the bit of flair we badly missed in the first half. 

Here are a few of my thoughts about the game. 

Credit to Burnley

There is going to be some criticism of Huddersfield Town later in this blogpost but I think it is important to firstly praise Burnley for how well they played. While it was a poor Town performance, that shouldn’t take away from a very impressive display from a Burnley side that were pretty dire at times last season, have sold many players this summer, brought in as many new players and have a new coach trying to bed in a completely new philosophy that is the complete opposite of the style that has brought all of Burnley’s previous success under Sean Dyche.  So they did pretty well.

It was hard not to smile as Burnley fans chanted “Fancy football!” while their midfielders stroked the ball elegantly around the park like our players were merely cones in a training exercise (or was it an ironic anti-football, my ears arent great at picking up distant chants). They passed us to death for periods of the first half and made us look silly. While there were clear signs of a team in transition and they have potential to be much, much better than they were on Friday night, it’s already clear to me that Burnley could be the dominant team in this year’s Championship.

But when has the story of the Championship ever been that straight forward? It will be interesting to see how Kompany’s journey at Burnley progresses. They looked like a mid table Premier League side already on Friday night but was that because Town were out of shape and got their tactics wrong? We’ll know more in a few weeks but it’s perfectly possible that we’ll look back and think coming away with a 1-0 defeat might have been an acceptable result that avoided our goal difference taking a pounding.

Danny Schofield’s short honeymoon 

It’s clear that Danny Schofield is a lovely man and is well thought of among Town fans because of how well he did for us as a player. If anyone thought that affection might have bought him an extended honeymoon period as head coach then they just needed to listen to the reaction from some fans at half time to see that is not true. Boos rang around the John Smith’s Stadium as the players went down the tunnel, which proved that Schofield’s honeymoon period was around 45 minutes, if that, and some fans were already out for blood.

Obviously it’s bonkers that some fans think one half of football is long enough to make up your mind about a new head coach but it’s a fact of modern football that if you lose a handful of games there will be a vocal section of fans calling for you to go. Schofield came into this job with no track record, little fanfare and a lot to prove. He had a tough opening assignment against Burnley as they proved to be a very good team rather than the wounded animal halfway through an awkward transition.

I know Schofield was slated for his selection but I think it was sensible to not throw in the new recruits in this first game as hardly any of them have played with the first eleven team in the friendly games for one reason or another. He probably should have changed the system in the first half when we were obviously being overrun by Burnley in midfield and couldn’t get out of our own half but otherwise he did OK. 

To Schofield’s credit, he did make the required changes at half-time and we came out with a much better game plan that stopped Burnley getting into their flow quite. He also subbed the most ineffectual players and brought on players that made an impact. 

So, in summary, I think this wasn’t a mixed bag for Schofield in his first competitive game as head coach. I think Burnley would have been a tough opponent regardless of the team we put out but too many of Town’s players underperformed on the night. Schofield was initially a bit slow to react to events on the pitch but when he did act, he made the right decisions and those changes could have earned Town an unlikely point on another night.

Old problems from last season persist

The only player starting this game that wasn’t in last season’s squad was Rarmani Edmonds-Green and that was only because he was away on loan at Rotherham. So it’s not a huge surprise that we saw some problems from last season rear their head again. So to save time, I’ll use bullet points to summarise the issues we saw in this game:

• Russell and Hogg are too slow to be played together. I mentioned this in my team prediction article and suggested it could be solved by Russell just moving about a bit more. Instead they both looked statuesque at times.
• We don’t create enough. We had no shots on target all game. After not managing one in the playoff final either, that’s two consecutive games where we’ve not tested the opposition keeper. I think we should not allow this to happen again this season. It feels wrong to have spent 90 minutes playing football and to have not at least once managed to get the ball heading towards the goal. Their keeper might as well have brought along some sudoku puzzles to keep them occupied.
• Koroma’s bag of tricks is empty – We’ve seen Koroma when his confidence is high and he’s capable of beating a man with skill and trickery but now when he’s dribbling at a fullback he just seems to stumble straight towards him and cough up the ball. And when he does get into a position to cross or shoot the end product is rarely anything but poor. 
• We rely on Sorba too much going forward – It’s not healthy to expect all our attacking play to flow through one player. Firstly, if they have an off day the whole team suffers. Secondly, the opposition can then easily focus on marking one player and kill all our attacks off. So it’s good that we’ve brought in new attacking blood this summer with the likes of Anjorin and Rudoni and hopefully that will take some of the weight off Sorba Thomas’ shoulders.

Hope for the future from the new signings

The biggest glimmer of hope in this game came from the bench with the double substitution of Tino Anjorin and Jack Rudoni. Both added positivity and attacking threat at a time when it was badly needed alongside giving the crowd a lift which then translated to the whole team raising their levels.

Tino Anjorin really caught the eye even though a lot of what he did didn’t actually come off, he looked sharp and hungry and the direct way he ran at Burnley when he got on the ball caused a bit of panic in their back line. In a game that didn’t offer a lot in the way of positives for Huddersfield Town fans, Anjorin hinted towards a talent that might give us an edge this season and also give us something special in the final third.

Jack Rudoni was another player that hinted towards a skill set that could be a useful asset this season. Where Josh Koroma looked to have the weight of the world on him when he was in possession, Rudoni seemed light on his feet and willing to take on as many defenders as would try and tackle him. Like with Anjorin, it didn’t always work out for him but he was willing to try and that was what we wanted to see.

Keeping things in perspective

I thought Town were very poor in the first half of this game but I will say that we still managed to keep a very good Burnley side to just one goal and that says something about our ability to be fairly hard to break down even when we don’t play well. That was a habit of last season that will hopefully persist this season. 

I know it’s not much of a consolation that we managed to only get beaten by a single goal but last season’s success was built upon a lot of games where we won despite not playing the best football. Loads of teams finished games against us telling us we were lucky and that we didn’t deserve the three points but we kept on winning anyway. If we can keep that habit of being hard to score against but add a bit more of a threat up the top end of the field then we may be able to mount another serious challenge this season. (I’m not sure that’s a realistic ambition though.)

My point about keeping things in perspective though, is to just say that this one game doesn’t define our whole season. It wasn’t pretty to watch at times but hopefully we’ll take some lessons from this game and it will mean we’re better set up for the more winnable games that lie ahead in the next few weeks. 

Dipping into the transfer market

Before this game I thought that we might have been more or less done with transfers this summer but now I’m not so sure. We certainly have enough bodies within the squad but the quality and variety of options may be an issue. 

The most obvious issue is the fact that Matty Pearson’s ankle injury is nastier than first thought and sounds like it could be many months before we’ll see him playing. I don’t think I heard a specific timeframe quoted but it sounded like after Christmas if not more like Easter given the grave tones used to describe the injury. So while we have options in this position we may want to bring in someone else to add a bit of depth. 

The other, never-ending quest, is for a striker. We’ve got Rhodes and Ward but after that we’ve got the untested Philips as our third choice. We’ve been linked with a youngster from Newcastle on loan but it sounds like we’re one of many and I suspect it would be tough to sell the opportunity to be the third choice striker after we shipped Mipo Odebeku back to West Ham after barely playing a game last season.

Then there’s the potential to sign James McAtee. Arguably we don’t need him after bringing in Tino Anjorin and Jack Rudoni as they both fill similar roles but can you have too many attacking options? McAttee is apparently available for a season-long loan and is a top prospect. He can play as a winger or attacking midfielder and scores goals for fun in Man City’s reserves.