I’m a bit pushed for time, so this is going to be a lightning quick post about Town’s 3-1 defeat to Manchester United, a brief preview of the Fulham game, and some of the transfer rumours I’ve heard about that involve Town. Enjoy!
Some random thoughts about Manchester United 3-1 Huddersfield Town
Normally I’d flesh these ideas out into full, semi-coherent paragraphs, but here are the bullet points:
- The atmosphere at Old Trafford is abysmal. Town fans did an excellent job of out singing the rest of the stadium. I guess they call it “The Theatre of Dreams” because you can have a nap in peace for 85 minutes of every game.
- On a similar note, when the board went up to announce the injury time the stadium was half-empty. The people in the home end weren’t really Manchester United “fans” in my eyes, just consumers that go to be entertained. Literally thousands of Man United fans will have gone home assuming they won 3-0 because they were halfway to the car park when Zanka scored our consolation goal.
- Town played very well for the majority of the match and created some good chances. I know this is something you could say for most matches this season, but after a shabby showing at home against Southampton it was a relief to see some fight back in the team.
- I think Hadergjonaj is a quality player, but he made minor errors in each of United’s three goals. For the first he let Lindelof get away from him on the corner, and his flick on led to their goal. For the second and third he didn’t get tight enough on Pogba and was punished. These are the kind of mistakes that you often get away with, but sadly not when playing the top teams.
- We’re still not taking our chances. Depoitre was desperately unlucky to see De Gea pull off a top class save to deny him, but others spurned easier chances at key points in the game. It’s encouraging the chances are still coming, but we desperately need someone to come in to the team that can convert them.
- David Wagner brought back the 4-2-3-1 formation for this game and it seemed to work well for the 70-odd minutes we played that way. The full backs sat deep, as you’d expect against a better team, but otherwise we showed real attacking intent and it meant we had more attacking player on the pitch.
- While I admired the balls from David Wagner to field a relatively attacking team away to a top six team, I wasn’t quite so impressed with his changes in the second half. Despite being behind in the game, he made a number of negative alterations. This included changing to a 5-3-2 system that didn’t really work and taking off a winger for a full back. I suspect there was some logic to these changes, but from the stands it seemed like a series of odd decisions. (Please don’t see this criticism of Wagner as me joining the #WagnerOut crowd, I’m still completely convinced he’s the best man for the job.)
Fulham away is now a massive game
Nobody really expected us to come away with anything from Manchester United away, other than a pat on the back for showing some pluck in the face of one of the world’s most expensively assembled football teams. Fulham away is a different proposition and it’s a match we can’t afford to lose if we want to stay within touching distances of the other relegation candidates.
Town currently lay bottom of the Premier League, but a victory against Fulham will mean we’ll leapfrog them and will be back in the scrap to avoid relegation. A defeat will anchor us to the bottom and require a huge effort to climb out.
Unsurprisingly, the bookies don’t fancy our chances of getting a win against Fulham but I’m more confident than they are we can get a win. We’re not playing like a team that’s bottom of the table and haven’t won in six games, and I expect we’ll ask some difficult questions of Fulham. Hogg is likely to return to the starting lineup, and if we continue to play 4-2-3-1 I can imagine we’ll be able to get something out of the game.
The next three league games see us play Fulham, Burnley and Cardiff. Every Town fan knows that these games are likely to decide whether we stay up or not this season. I think five points are the absolute minimum we need from this sequence of games to have a fighting chance of survival. So a draw against Fulham isn’t a disaster if we can back it up with positive results in the next two league games. A defeat will pile even more pressure onto our upcoming fixtures.
Huddersfield Town transfer rumour roundup
The January transfer window will be opening in a few days and it’s already clear there is going to be some movement this month. Here’s a quick summary of the bits and pieces of news that are floating around:
- Rajiv van La Parra seems almost certain to join Middlesbrough on loan, as he was spotted up there having a medical in advance of a deal that will send him up to the North East for the rest of the season
- Ramadan Sohbi has also been strongly linked with a loan deal away from Town for the rest of the season, going to his old club in Egypt, Al Ahly (UPDATE: This deal has now been confirmed by the club. David Wagner explained that Sohbi has been unlucky with injuries and hasn’t been able to force his way into the team. Despite it only being a loan, I suspect we won’t see Sohbi in a Town shirt again.)
- Solanke arriving from Liverpool on loan is still be talked about but there’s nothing concrete yet
- There’s also talk aboutEx-Manchester City striker Jovetic coming from Monaco on loan, although this rumour may have been manufactured because we’ve got a track record of hoovering up Monaco’s fringe players
- Hull winger Jarrod Bowen (no relation to Jim) is being linked to a number of clubs, with Town being mentioned as part of the chasing pack. This one sounds like it’s just and agent trying to spark a bidding war, but he’s got an impressive number of goals from the wing so far this season
- The Daily Mail have reported that Spurs are sniffing around Philip Billing. Given we’ve got virtually no other central midfielders that are fit at the moment it’ll need to be a ridiculous offer for us to part with the big Dane.