Town continued their miraculous unbeaten run by beating Birmingham at the weekend, also giving them their third win in eight days. Beating a relatively poor Birmingham side may not be as attention grabbing as our recent exploits, but it was a professional and disciplined job from the Terriers and further boosted our playoff credentials.
Here are a few of my thoughts on the game.
A 2-goal cushion makes life more comfortable
One of my favourite things about this game was how Town managed to win without being particularly exceptional. They got their noses in front, then got a second goal and after that we looked to be mostly in control. Pot shots from range by Hernandez and Bacuna went close to going in but Nicholls and the woodwork meant we kept our clean sheet. Beyond those two moments we were relatively comfortable for the whole game.
The Championship is notorious for being a slog and it’s very hard to be at your best in every game, so the fact Town won this game without really reaching top gear is satisfying. I genuinely think there is another gear that Town could have gone up to if Birmingham had scored but instead they kept their discipline and made themselves hard to break down.
Getting the extra goal when we were on top was a major factor in how comfortable this victory felt. We’ve had a lot of narrow wins this season where we’ve been on top for periods but then had to endure nervy finishes (and often conceded equalisers) because we only led by a single goal. While the cliche says that 2-0 is a dangerous lead, it’s nowhere near as precarious as being only one goal ahead. Having a cushion makes closing out games a lot more comfortable.
Birmingham were poor
I felt like Town won this game without having to be at their best because Birmingham made it easy for us. While Town deserve credit for taking their opportunities and not allowing Birmingham back into the game, both goals were quite soft, particualrly the defensive blunders that led to O’Brien scoring from close range.
Birmingham reminded me of Town when they have been at their worst, playing without confidence, getting the basics wrong and gifting opportunities to opponents. Our energetic pressing and speed going forward helped to punish these weaknesses but Birmingham were not good.
It’s amazing to think how Town have changed over the last few months. We’re now able to exploit struggling teams with ruthless efficiency after previously blundering from one defeat to another. The fact we’ve done it without major investment in the squad is even more impressive.
Rotation policy paying off
The depth available to Corberan in his current squad is giving him opportunities to rotate and freshen up his lineup from game to game. Rhodes, Toffolo, Hogg and Colwill all came into the lineup and were at least equivalent to the players they replaced. This is a huge contrast to last season when unprepared youngsters were thrown into the deep end out of necessity
The funny thing is that we haven’t even been all that lucky with injuries, we’ve just got a better squad this season. Pipa, Vallejo, Aarons, Rowe, Anjorin and Schofield are all unavailable at the moment but would otherwise mostly be pushing to be part of the matchday squad.
Having a proper squad available gives Carlos a lot of options and the ability to take a horses for courses kind of approach, where he can mix and match his starting team depending on the opponents we’re going to face. Pipa and Anjorin will soon add to Calros’ selection headaches but I’m sure they’re the kind of problems he enjoys having.
“Leaky Blinders” tweet deleted
I thought it was quite funny when the official Town Twitter account named Birmingham the “Leaky Blinders” in a post-match tweet. While it may have been a little bit disrespectful to our hosts it was also the kind of ribbing they opened themselves up to by renaming themselves the Small Health Alliance for the day in tribute to the TV show Peaky Blinders.
Something doesn’t feel right about renaming your team to promote a TV programme. It feels a bit cheesy and overly commercial. Hardly as bad as our Paddy Power shirt stunt but somewhere on that spectrum. So why not have some fun at their expense with a cheeky tweet?
Someone higher up at Town or Birmingham mustn’t have liked the tweet though as it no longer exists (apart from in screenshot form, as you can see below). I hope the administrator of the Town Twitter account hasn’t been given a hard time about the tweet as I think we need more of this kind of thing. Social media is meant to be a rough and tumble environment to exchange jokes and barbs with rivals. If you are going to take offence at being mocked for changing your name for the day to promote a TV programme then maybe you shouldn’t change your name in the first place.
Playoff position solidified
The league table is starting to take shape for Town. While teams below us winning their games in hand could catch us in theory, it now seems quite unlikely that they’ll all win and push us out of the playoffs. Maybe we won’t stay in third but I’m now starting to believe that we’ll retain our top six position even when all the games in hand are caught up with, provided we keep accumulating points at a similar rate.
The bookies still don’t see Town as genuine promotion contenders but it’s hard to understand why we aren’t more highly rated. Our current run has proven that we can get results against any team in the league and we’ve been able to play a variety of ways to bring about those results. Whether it’s sitting deep and hitting teams on the break or retaining the ball and breaking teams down patiently, we have the knack for finding a way to get something out of every game.
Maybe we could go up the right way
I said in the comments section of the blog a while ago that I didn’t want Town to get promoted this season because I found the second season in the Premier League to be a bit dreary. Getting beaten every week and feeling the club falling to pieces in front of us wasn’t a lot of fun for fans. I’m starting to change my mind about our prospects this time around. Perhaps we’ve learned from our past experience and could do promotion the right way.
Rather than wasting the money we’d get from going up on mercenaries that don’t care about Town, we could instead keep the core of the current squad together and just add in quality players that, crucially, are also good characters that are willing to buy into the collective mentality that has helped Town to do so well this season. Part of me thinks the Championship is a more entertaining division for teams like Town, it would be nice to have a seat at the top table if we go about it the right way.
Agree with you about promotion and how build this time.
I’m not one of those fans who never wants to go up again as the Championship (and divisions below us) is strewn with the corpses of clubs who failed to take their chance then fell to peices the next season.
We will never be ready to go up. In fact hardly anyone ever is as you can see in all the ex-Championship clubs now fighting relegation. All we can do is to try to get there and then do the best we can. Last time neither the manager or the players he brought in were good enough for that league – or cared enough about Town to try. It is true that the existing team would need another rebuild but the foundations seem better if it happened this time.
On another subject we seemed to have sidestepped Carlos going to Leeds with Marsch about to be installed. However if we continue to succeed I can see him being offered other opportunities elsewhere so it may be difficult to keep him, especially if we just fail to be promoted.
here is the thing , all the teams below is CANT win all their games in hand , not because its unlikely its actually impossible.
When you look at the games that were rescheduled the games in hand the teams below us have are against each other so some have to drop points
Sheff utd for instance have 2 games in hand , those games are against Boro and QPR .
Boro also have 2 games in hand those games are the aforementioned Sheff Utd and Fulham
in fact all but one team in the top ten below us with games in hand have to play at least one other top ten team in those games .
so there will be dropped points in those games there has to be
There is a lot of talk about Towns league position being false due to other teams having matches in hand but it’s not as bad as it seems. Taking Bournemouth out of the equation for the moment, the other teams with matches in hand can only go above Town by 1 point or get to the same number of points and go above on goal difference. Another couple of wins and we should be clear of everyone – then it’s on to catching and passing Bournemouth.
Good post and I broadly agree.
I don’t think we can underestimate the impact Nicholls has had this season. Has to be my POTY and what a signing to be fair. It just shows that whilst selling Hamer and putting Schofield in was the right thing on paper he just wasn’t ready. I don’t mean that as a direct criticism of Schofield, if anything he was done a disservice and might never fulfil his potential now.
Jay – we were that corpse of a club that fell to pieces, it’s good to be back!
John – I agree it’s impossible to be ready, the championship needs a different approach generally without even bringing in the finances into the conversation. Norwich had a really good go but look how they have been taken apart.
How to approach it is the million dollar question isn’t it.
Season 1 you have a confident, winning team full of the energy of promotion (that positive start kept us up season1 last time) and teams haven’t faced you before so a bit of unknown. If you survive, Season2 is the real challenge as we well know, you need to adapt, vary and build without losing your team spirit which is not that easy at all especially when you are always going to lose more than you win and take a couple of hammerings most likely too.
The poor recruitment is what really did for us last time – along with a slightly more out there opinion of mine that DW totally (incorrectly) lost his nerve after the Spurs game – and my approach would be to keep the core and try to add young, hungry improvements preferably the best from the Championship rather than abroad.
Aim for 17th up but if you go down it’s one of the strongest squads already with improving players. There isn’t a perfect approach so I readily accept others think another way.
At least the Prem money last time was invested in making us ready in infrastructure terms (for Sky etc) so more for transfers one hopes if needed.
It’s football so I wouldn’t be surprised if CC left but equally his style is always going to need time to bed in so would like to think he’d see this project (sigh) through until at least end of Y3. Always the optimist….
If by some chance we do go up rebuilding the team is the most difficult part. The squad now is made up of
young players who are trying to further their careers or players in the twilight of the careers who are glad to be still playing football at this level. This means that everyone is trying really hard for themselves and for the team. Our recruitment team seem to look at the character of the players brought in, almost as much as their skill on the field. Just buying players who are only in it for the money as a lot of those brought in last time were is not the way to go and we will have to continue to concentrate on team players who will fit in and work for Huddersfield Town and not just for themselves. First though, lets get promoted!