As the season opener approaches for Town I found it hard to write a preview for the year ahead because I can’t make my mind up about the kind of season we should expect as Town fans. Obviously last season was a terrible time for the club but lots has changed since our relegation from the Premier League.
In the end, I decided to make two separate and contradictory season previews. One for the optimists and one for the pessimists. This article is going to take a doom and gloom look at the season ahead, for all the negative Nancys out there. If you’d prefer the rose-tinted specs version then click this link.
Here are my reasons to feel worried about Town’s prospects this year:
Jan Siewert is inexperienced and clearly struggled in his first half a season
Town were poor towards the end of David Wagner’s reign at the club, but we didn’t improve much when Jan Siewert came in. Generally clubs experience a bounce under new management but Town seemed more likely to crumble under Siewert than Wagner.
While it was nice to see the new manager try to play a more open and attacking type of football, we were hopelessly naive at times. If you’d like a specific example I’ll refer you to the 14th second of Town’s away game against Liverpool. We were away to the best pressing team around and we decided to try playing the ball out from the back and before many fans had even found the seat, we were picking the ball out of our own net.
The fans will feel jaded after last season
The great atmosphere generated by Town’s fans has been a consistent positive for the club throughout the last three seasons but can we keep it up? Could this season feel like a bit of an anti-climax for many fans and might we see things return to the more subdued atmosphere we found at the John Smith’s prior to Wagner’s arrival?
I’m genuinely not sure what kind of atmosphere we’ll see at Town games this season. The Cowshed Loyal have done a great job in recent seasons of making the crowd sing through most of every home game. Can they keep it up through another season? Even if we’re playing badly? I don’t know.
What if it was the clappers that made the atmosphere and we stop using them? Wouldn’t is be embarrassing if the only thing that made our stadium bounce was twenty thousand bits of card being banged up and down!
Dean Hoyle’s no longer in charge
If you’ve not listened to the excellent Dean Hoyle interview on the “And He Takes That Chance” podcast then I’d recommend you stop reading this and listen to that instead. It’s a fascinating insight into his time at Town with some great behind-the-scenes insights. Sadly though it makes you realise that we’ll never have a Chairman like him again.
While I feel pretty good about Phil Hodgkinson getting involved, he has impossibly big shoes to fill. I expect I’ll be a Town fan for most of my life and I’m pretty sure that I’ll look back on this last decade as among the best years to have been a Huddersfield Town fan.
So, in keeping with the miserable tone of this post, it’s all downhill from here.
We’ve shopped in the bargain bins this summer
While my positive season preview talked up the potential of our signings this summer, a more cynical look would say we’ve signed:
- A central defender that is getting old and barely played for Villa last season
- A non-league striker
- A League Two midfielder
- A German defender with very little professional experience
- A completely unproven goalkeeper
I appreciate that the bulk of the money from the Premier League has either been spent already or is needed to pay the wages of the players we already have, but it would have been nice to have brought in more proven Championship players the right side of 30.
Any big players leaving will be hard to replace in this window
There’s no way to know if Town can keep hold of their star players but it would be a massive blow if Schindler, Mooy or Kongolo left in the next few days. We’ll struggle to replace them with similar quality.
Both Phil Hodgkinson and Jan Siewert have referenced it taking “three windows” to get the squad how they want it. So I suspect both will be happy to bide their time and sit on transfer money received if we sell a key player and can’t bring in the right replacement.
The team will have to shake the losing habit
We lost a lot of games last season. Losing became so familiar that it was an expectation every game. Being the whipping boys leaves a lasting impression and many teams that go down find it hard to turn it around in the league below.
The Championship is a competitive league, so if we go on a losing run we could quickly find ourselves struggling at the wrong end of the table. Just because we’ve spent a bit of money on the players in our squad doesn’t mean we’re too good to be relegated again. If you want proof, just look at Sunderland when they came down from the Premier League.
We are reliant on Karlan Grant to score goals
I’ve really liked the look of Karlan Grant since we signed him in January but he’s still a young player and there is a lot of expectation on his shoulders. He’s the only Town player that looked capable of consistently finishing chances that came his way last season (with Mooy as the only other possible addition). The last three seasons have seen Town struggle to convert good football into goals, or even clear cut chances. Karlan Grant could be the answer to that problem, but we could do with a Plan B in case he’s injured or struggles for form.
Feeling miserable now? Check out my optimistic preview for some much-needed positivity.