Duff’s revenge, learning not winning, May headache & predicted Huddersfield Town lineup to take on Wycombe

Huddersfield Town head to Wycombe this afternoon in a game that will see Town reunited with their former manager, Michael Duff. While Wycombe had a dodgy start to the season, they’ve picked up since Duff’s arrival and he’s been able to make them competitive in most games. 

Town come into the game in poor form, and Lee Grant is under pressure after a run of lacklustre and tactically naive displays. A win might quiet some of those doubting voices, and a defeat would increase the speculation about his ability to lead “The Group”.

Will this be Duff’s revenge?

Michael Duff spoke about his exit from Huddersfield Town in his press conference for this game. He was discreet enough not to start getting into specifics but he did make it clear he felt badly done to by Town and his exit was somewhat acrimonious. I’m certain he’ll be desperate to win this game to prove a point to his former employer and will no doubt use that as fuel to motivate his players.

I personally feel that Duff was a bit harshly treated, and we didn’t give him enough time to turn things around. The thinking was that Duff was massively underachieving and getting rid of him would unleash the brilliant squad we had. Jonathan Worthington’s ten-game stint was woeful, and the players in last year’s squad showed Duff was actually wringing all he could from them, and after he left we became significantly worse. 

The bits I’ve heard about Duff’s start at Wycombe sound familiar to how his Huddersfield Town team played. They’ve been picking up results despite their performances being underwhelming. They’ve a solid (biscuit) base and are hard to break down, but struggle to put together decent attacking play. Sounds very familiar. With Town in stale form, it doesn’t promise to be a feast of football!

Will we stop learning and start winning?

I don’t know if it’s the press focussing endlessly on this idea or if it’s Lee Grant’s fixation, but I’m really sick of all this talk about learning lessons from defeats. It gets to a point where Grant sounds like he’s pleased we’ve lost just because it’ll have taught us so many lessons. 

The worse thing is that the talk of learning lessons never seems to translate to significant changes on the pitch, either in terms of the players’ behaviour or the manager’s decision-making. For example, we were awful against ten-man Blackpool but we’re somehow worse when we faced the same situation against Stockport. Against Bradford, we conceded two quick first-half stoppage-time goals to throw away the match, then did the same against Bolton only in second-half stoppage time. And Grant persists with selecting the same out-of-form players and persists with failing tactics. 

I would rather we stopped “learning” so many lessons and just started winning games. There is no award at the end of the season for the team that has learned the most or been on the best emotional journey. If these players are as good as we’ve been told they are, the learning on the job has to stop and delivering results has to start. 

What will Lee Grant do with Alfie May?

I’m going to try to predict Lee Grant’s whole team selection below but the most interesting question will be the role Alfie May is allocated for this game. He was played at number ten against Bolton and drifted deeper still at times. Radio Leeds questioned Grant on whether May should be played as a striker and received a terse one-word answer of no, suggesting he doesn’t see May as a striker. 

I think Lee Grant knew he’d fumbled the question about May in his interview with Radio Leeds after Bolton because he gave an almost entirely contradictory answer to the same question in the press conference for this game. He was rambling and drifted into word salad but he pretty much said that May can play in a few positions, but he’s principally a striker. 

It’s conceivable that Grant will acknowledge his error in playing May out of position and push him back to being our main striker but it’s just as likely that he’ll stick to his guns and keep May playing behind Taylor. Even though almost everyone else’s opinion on this issue is that Alfie May is too good at this level to not be played in his best position. Grant could also drop May and return Harness for the starting eleven, though that would mean benching one of the few players that always gives 100% on the pitch. 

You can read my opinion on where May will feature in the section below. 

Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Wycombe

I usually do a separate article for my team prediction but I think there will be minimal changes to the starting XI that played Bolton last week, so it’s easier to shove all my pre-Wycombe thoughts into one article. 

I expect Lee Grant will drop Joe Taylor to the bench, bring Marcus Harness in and put him on the right wing. That means Alfie May can move up to the main striker role, Ben Wiles can slide in to the number ten slot, and Castledine can move over to the other wing, where he’s able to cut in and go for those right-footed Koroma curlers. 

If we had better options, Kasumu, Ledson and Low could all risk losing their places after recent poor outings but central defence and midfield have been plagued by injuries. So I doubt there’ll be more changes, even if several players have dipped out of form.