Fotheringham’s interview confusion, defensive errors, Ayina subbed before red, misfiring strikers – notes on Huddersfield Town’s defeat to PNE

Huddersfield Town lost 3-1 to Preston and saw themselves leave the FACup at the third round stage despite taking the lead early in the second half. It was a game that the Terriers probably could have won “on another day” , to borrow a phrase our head coach is fond of using. 

But rather than looking forward to a fourth round tie against Tottenham Hotspur, like PNE are now doing, we are instead having to rue our missed opportunities and convince ourselves that we wanted to concentrate on the league anyway. What tosh, I’d much rather have a bit of cup glory as a distraction from the drudgery of a relegation scrap. 

Here are a few of my thoughts from the game…

Defensive errors cost Town dearly

All three of Preston’s goals looked bad in real time and are even worse when you watch them back. All three involved fairly basic errors, for the first two David Kasumu was mostly to blame. 

Kasumu initially does well to use his lightning pace to get to the ball ahead of the Preston player he’s in a race with to win the loose ball but he then ruins his good work by getting his pocket picked. The cross that followed was a good one, but I’m not sure what Tom Lees was thinking with his body position when attempting his clearance. Everyone makes mistakes and Lees makes them rarely enough to forgive him this one, but I’m baffled about why he let the ball come across his body and tried to waft his foot at the ball in such a strange manner. If he’d done it at the other end of the pitch, I’d be stunned by him applying such a deft finish.

The second goal was all Kasumu’s fault, with a ridiculously heavy touch in his own box presenting an absolute gift of a chance that was snaffled up by Diaby. I’m a fan of Kasumu’s, so I’ll not go too overboard on criticising him here but these errors are pretty basic. It just feels like he’s not understanding the danger when defending near his own goal and he’s making sloppy mistakes. Hopefully these two costly mistakes will be moments he’ll learn from and won’t make again.

The third goal was probably the worst of the three. The lack of aggression and desire to defend was pretty appalling from the whole team for this passage of play. It’s a fairly good ball into the far post but there are enough Town players around to clear it but they just didn’t show the desire to get to the ball first. It wasn’t about fitness or speed, it was lack of heart and commitment that led to them not winning that race, which is very disappointing. Even before the cross came in, there was no pressure on the ball from midfield, it seemed like we had given up at this point and were letting Preston have their way with us, which is very concerning.

Town’s new striking options fail to impress

With Tyreece Simpson and Florent Kamberi now available, Town have two new strikers to turn to and both were given the chance to impress on Saturday. Despite Kamberi scoring on his debut, neither really impressed. Both look a bit clumsy with their first touch and seem a bit cumbersome when they’re in the box. Maybe I’m being a bit harsh, as Kamberi at least popped up and scored a goal. I’m not getting too excited about that though, as it was the kind of finish that literally anyone would slot away the majority of the time. And the chance that fell to him a few minutes later was equally straightforward and he hit it straight at the defender blocking on the line.

As much as we’ve complained about Ward and Rhodes over the last few seasons, we may find that the new options we have available aren’t huge improvements on these two. Or at least, they are better in some ways but worse in others.

With Rhodes, Ward, Simpson and Kamberi we now have four senior strikers on the books and usually play a system with one striker, so it seems we’re well stocked. Could this be the transfer window where Town fans aren’t shouting out for a new striker? Based on this game, probably not but it may be that we look to offload one or both of Ward or Rhodes before bringing in any more attacking options. 

Fotheringham’s media comments cause confusion

In Mark Fotheringham’s post-match interview he made a remark about how “I’ll be choosing the team from now on” and then made some critical remarks about the things he’d seen that afternoon. It wasn’t exactly clear what he meant but many fans have taken this comment to mean that it might not have been Fotheringham who selected the starting eleven for this match, suggesting someone else, presumably Leigh Bromby the Director of Football (or whatever equivalent title he has). 

My impression was that Fotheringham’s remarks about picking the team was more meant to emphasise that, as the person who picks the team, he was unimpressed by what he saw from the players who came into the team on Saturday. But, in fairness to the people that read more into what he said, it did sound a bit odd the way he talked about player selection. And, to make matters worse, there have been rumblings in the past that Leigh Bromby tends to meddle too much in the day-to-day affairs of the first team and has annoyed previous head coaches with his interference. 

I think the bigger issue with this situation is that Mark Fotheringham isn’t very good at talking to the press. He quite regularly says silly things in pre and post match interviews that annoy fans or throw his players under the bus. I quite enjoy the fact he doesn’t just follow the boring manager script that most use when asked questions by the media but the problem is that by being more open in his responses he has a tendency to put his foot in it. 

I even did a quick Google search, and all football coaches that have done their “badges” will have done modules on media training. So it’s not that Fotheringham hasn’t had any training on how to deal with the press. It’s just he seems to not be able to cope with relatively softball questions. Bear in mind that most of his media mistakes come from questions from either the club’s own in-house media guys, The Examiner or Radio Leeds. All the people that need an ongoing relationship with him, so not looking to catch him out or trip him up with gotcha questions.

Ayina subbed off before he was sent off

I selected Ayina in the defence in my prematch team prediction and said that he has the potential to get in trouble with the referee because of his aggressive approach. That proved to be the case, with him putting in a series of dodgy tackles that repeatedly saw him being spoken to by the referee, getting booked and being very lucky to receive a final, final warning for the foul that led to him being subbed out of the game around the 37 minute mark.

Being aggressive and taking no prisoners is a great attitude to have and you can play like that if you time your tackles perfectly. Refs might blow for fouls if they think you’ve gone in too hard but they’ll rarely book you or send you off for being too committed if you come away with the ball. Ayina’s problem wasn’t aggression, it was ability, as he was late to his tackles and nowhere near the ball. Leaving the referee very little wiggle room. In fact, even with my blue and white tinted spectacles on, I think he was exceptionally lucky not to be sent off, as the foul just before he was taken off looked like an obvious second booking to me. 

I’m sure the bench will have considered the impact on his confidence before taking the decision to take him out of the game but I think it was the right call. It would have been more cruel to have left him in the game, on a booking, having used up all his goodwill with the ref and Preston obviously targeting his flank for special attention. He was either going to get sent off or have to let players go past him to avoid giving away fouls which could have led to goals. 

The difficult thing now is knowing what to do next with this young player that has previously been seen as the fourth choice centre back when we play with three at the back. Thankfully Matty Pearson is getting back to fitness, so he’s less likely to be needed but on this evidence Ayina isn’t ready for first team football at this level. I think a loan might be a good thing for him where he can get more game time to build up experience, as he needs to put this bad experience behind him.