Huddersfield Town were beaten 3-0 by Brentford yesterday in the first league game in their new stadium. Despite Town dominating possession, Brentford were the only team that looked like winning yesterday’s game.
This was not a pretty performance from Town and it showed just how far we have to go before we can consider ourselves equals to teams like Brentford.
Here are my ratings for each of Town’s players.
Ben Hamer – 6 out of 10
Hamer had a pretty good game apart from one moment. He made some decent saves and played some nice passes out from the back. Unfortunately he also played a pass that went straight to the opposition and on most days would have resulted in a goal but Toney squandered the opportunity when one-on-one with Hamer. There are some good signs coming from Hamer but he still has a mistake in him and when we’re not scoring goals we can’t afford to gift opportunities at the other end.
Harry Toffolo – 6 out of 10
Unlucky to be subbed off after just half an hour with an injury. Hopefully it’s minor and he will be available again soon. Despite only being at the club since January, he’s one of our most influential players.
Richard Stearman – 6 out of 10
Not too bad a performance from Stearman, he made a lot of blocks and clearances at the back. I thought he formed a good partnership with Crichlow after Schindler’s injury and would like to see how that pairing develops.
Christopher Schindler – 6 out of 10
Was doing OK until he pulled up with a worrying hamstring injury. Prior to that he took two whacks to the head from Bacuna when they both went for the same ball. I genuinely don’t think I’ve seen a player bang his head so much as Schindler has done in the last twelve months. Sadly, he won’t get the opportunity to put his bonce on the line for a little while as way he left the pitch suggested a pulled hamstring which will most likely rule him out for a few weeks at least.
Pipa – 5 out of 10
Made some positional mistakes that cost Town and Brentford scored from two such errors. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he was to blame but he could have stopped opportunities from developing by being in the right position. I don’t think these are the kind games where we’ll see the best from Pipa as his chances to bomb forward were limited.
Jonathan Hogg – 5 out of 10
He was completely let down by the players in front of him, who didn’t do enough to put pressure on Brentford. Because Hogg was so overrun, he was chasing shadows for much of the game. Brentford’s comfort on the ball and movement meant he struggled to get tackles in and protect the defence. Still too weak on the ball to play the role he’s been given in the new system.
Juninho Bacuna – 5 out of 10
It’s tricky to score Bacuna because we saw the good and the bad from him in this game. He was the player that looked most like feeding the three forward players and showed some attacking ambition when nobody else in a Town shirt looked interested in trying to win the game. He did still frustrate at times by overdoing things and adding in flicks where it would have been better to keep it simple. An improvement on his Norwich performance but still frustrating at times.
Alex Pritchard – 3 out of 10
Such a disappointment. Again. He continuously gets on the ball and then does nothing with it. Our midfield looked non-existent for periods against Brentford and he was a major part of that problem. He keeps getting selected because we don’t have any other options but I’d rather see us play one of the kids instead of watching him continuously slow the play down and do nothing with the ball.
Adama Diakhaby – 4 out of 10
Rarely got on the ball in areas that were remotely threatening to Brentford and couldn’t create any meaningful opportunities. His afternoon was summed up by the wild shot he took from 40 yards out that was so far high and wide it could have cleared the stadium completely. I had a look at the xG map after the game and shooting from that distance has a roughly 1 in 50 chance of a goal, which shows it was a poor decision when he could have instead passed to a number of teammates that were in better positions.
Josh Koroma – 4 out of 10
Another player given very few opportunities to show his abilities. He hassled the back line with his pressing but wasn’t able to force any mistakes out of them. Otherwise I’m struggling to remember anything much he did in the game, certainly nothing that might have got him a goal.
Isaac Mbenza – 3 out of 10
He was given the job of playing as a striker today but wasn’t able to hold the ball up in the opposition half or look remotely like a striker. Not his fault really as it’s not his main position but I hoped he might have fell a better fist of it. He did get a reasonable shot away in the first half in his defence. The reason I’ve scored him so poorly is the way he completely went to pieces in the last 20-30 minutes of the game. The two first half injury substitutions meant he had to play the full 90 and his inability to keep going meant it was like playing with ten men for the last third of the game.
Substitutes
Jaden Brown – 5 out of 10: Despite coming on mid-way through the first half he did very little of note. Equally, he didn’t do much wrong either.
Romoney Crichlow – 7 out of 10: Did a good job to come off the bench to replace Schindler. Looked calm in possession and made a few decent blocks to stop chances.
Frazier Campbell – N/A: Buzzed around and made a nuisance of himself when he came on but didn’t do enough be given a rating. Hopefully he can start next week and give us a bit more presence in the final third.
Want to read more?
Read my rant about all the things that went wrong in the Brentford game.
Essentially then, half the squad are simply not good enough and need replacing! The MAJOR problem being that many of these such players are crippling the club financially, both in terms of their initial fee, and now their weekly wages (I’m specifically thinking Pritchard, Diakhaby & Mbenza!) We don’t have the finances to simply buy replacements for these without selling them on, and there’s no queue of teams wanting to take them off our hands in their current form!! Instead, I’m sure the Manager’s brief is to get more out of them to yield improvement- but how long do we go before we decide they are simply not good enough!? The Grant situation may help; if we do get £16M for him perhaps we see a few new faces, and if Norwich really are interested in re-signing Pritchard we should snap their hand off in my view! Hopefully Fulham complete the Kongolo transfer, too. The bottom line is that we are seeing the repercussions of our 2nd season in the Premier League where we spent big on very poor players with no real desire or passion for our club beyond the league status we had back then. A huge rebuild needed which will not come quickly or cheaply, sadly. UTT!
Thanks for your comment Martin, I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. Those poor signings are now like a millstone around our neck. Annoyingly, Danny Cowley knew this and shipped them out. It now seems like we’re repeating the same mistakes again.
I will say that Diakhaby and Mbenza seem to have better attitudes this season but they still aren’t doing nearly enough to justify their price tags.
If I was in charge I’d be tempted to take a financial hit on the misfit players and get them away from the club. If Norwich are genuinely interested in Pritchard then we should get the deal done before they watch the videos of his recent performances.
The manager is rubbish , he does not have a clue , regardless of wether Grant is sold he should be playing ,HTAFC are still paying him so he should be in the team , the Cowleys should still be the manager and assistant and the chairman or owner like the manager is useless and acting like a spoilt brat in how he runs the club .
Thanks for the comment Peter. I personally don’t feel like I’ve seen enough of Corberán to know if he’s rubbish or a genius. I also wish we’d have kept the Cowleys but now we’ve got Carlos I’m hoping he’ll be as good as the board say he will be.
Brentford didn’t play Benrahma yesterday for the same reasosn6we didn’t play Grant, so it’s common to leave players out that are close to leaving. It’s just frustrating that it’s taking so long to complete the deal and move on.
I think there’s a sizeable chunk of fans that aren’t keen on Big Phil and how he’s running things. This group will grow or shrink, depending on how we get on in the transfer market. If we don’t make more quality signings then we’re setting ourselves up to fail.
Ok poor signings are one thing but when your chairman sells the majority of his shares taking back £35m of his investment in one go how do you expect the club to be financially stable. The deal done between Hoyle and Hodgekinson suited both parties the latter is not in this to lose money that’s for sure.
I think Dean’s an easy scapegoat but if we’d spent the Premier League money well we’d have barely noticed repaying back his loans because we’d have plenty of cash from player sales.
I don’t particularly blame Dean for wanting his money back. At the point he put it into the club we were never likely to repay him. Why shouldn’t he want paying back our of the over £200m windfall promotion gave us? It was his investment that got us there (and out of League One).
I’m basing my opinions on what we currently know about the financial side of the club. More will be revealed when the next lot of accounts come out and we may find out there’s something more sinister going on. But right now it seems like neither Dean or Phil are exploiting the club.
That doesn’t mean both haven’t made mistakes though but I think they have been made with the best of intentions.
We’ll have to see about whether Phil comes away from Town with a profit. Very few owners do in football and far more get their fingers burnt.
The accounts showed that someone in management was taking £330,000 a year out of the club as salary so if it was Hoyle it was rather a good interest rate on his investment. Then to take it back out, all at once certainly wasn’t the actions of a true supporter when he must have known would kill the club financially. It all leaves rather a nasty taste!
I agree with Peter James, Grant should be playing and if not we should be on the phone this morning to accept £5m and Charlie Austin for him, at the moment he is not worth tuppencehapenny, (ask your dad), all we need at the moment is a goal, and non of the lot on the field yesterday are capable of giving us one.we have fallen back on the half hearted lot again, the kids were great vs Man. U then back come Pritchard, Hogg, Schindler, etc. etc.
please Town do SOMETHING. UTT
I hope Grant was left out because he’s just about to leave and then we can spend some money.
I’d like to see more of the kids too because they can’t be much worse than some of our first team. It’s a big step up though and we’ll probably only see them in dribs and drabs to start with. I thought Crichlow was our man of the match yesterday but mostly because the rest were rubbish.
Putting aside whether the players are good enough which we’ve done to death there seems to be another major issue which appears to be affecting the players and that is training. It’s been well established that Corberan puts the players through very punishing training regimes and I think this is showing itself negatively in a number of ways. We have O’Brien, Ward, Schindler and Toffolo all out with stress related injuries. You said M’benza “went to pieces in the last 20 mins”, in other words he was worm out. The last few minutes saw 2 goals from Brentford which suggests the rest of the team also had nothing left. Managers continuously complain about too many matches in short time periods and they rotate the squad to accommodate this. In effect Corberan’s methods are killing the team in the same way. They over train and by the time the match comes round they have nothing left. There are only so many minutes in any athletes legs and if they are all used up in training they cannot perform on the day, or not for any length of time. A track athlete can’t run 10000 metres and 5000 metres the next day, they have to recover and so it is with players in any sport. So far I am less than impressed with Corberan and his methods and with all the “best” players missing I can’t see much improvement in the near future.
Great point John. I’ve just been writing something similar in an article I’m putting out later today. I’ll not regurgitate it all in this comment but my broad point was that it’s short term pain for long term gain. Once they adapt and can cope better injuries will reduce and we should be able to run for the full 90 minutes.
I’d recommend the “murderball” training session video the club put out this week if you want an idea of what training is like.
Yes I have seen the video and whilst there’s nothing wrong with the approach you can overdo things. I have seen a comment from a player that he started at 9am and only got home at 6pm. That seems just too much too quickly.
The fitness is definitely a factor but I’d hope that Corberán’s background as a fitness coach would mean he understands the limits players can operate in (although the current injury list suggests otherwise).
I think we’re seeing a difference because we let go a very highly rated fitness coach in John Iga. It may be that the accumulated injuries are seen as a price worth paying for an overall improved level of fitness.
It was a huge mistake sacking the Cowleys. They managed to prevent relegation which was a major feat in itself. They simply were not given the chance to remodel the team. Ridiculous reliance on instant success. The only instant this this season will be relegation.
I wish we’d have kept them. I can see the argument for buying foreign players on the cheap and bringing through youth, which was one of the areas of conflict between the club and the Cowleys. Bringing in established Championship performers wouldn’t be cheap but it would have been a more reliable way to build the squad. The Cowleys have a track record of creating winning teams and would have most likely done that with Town given time and the right backing.
I’m hopeful this new approach will pay off but it has to be matched with investment in the squad to have a chance.
I am quite impressed that the club has a clear vision and seems to be organising and recruiting for this vision. The problem is going from the squad we have to the squad we need and that will take time. Even then the training will take time to get to the stage where players do most things naturally. Personally, I do not think the kids are the answer. We need to bed them in with a managed approach so that they don’t get a losing mentality and the team will be better for that longer term. Unfortunately I think we will be battling around the bottom for a few weeks but believe that once the transfer market starts to move we will see more players out and more signings. If the recruitment is good then we will be ok. I think we all need to be patient and have belief in Phil. He has taken a huge risk but I think it will pay of. UTT
Phil said on the And He Takes That Chance podcast that this is the most important transfer window in the club’s history. So he’s aware we’ve got to get the transfer business right or we’re going to have a difficult season. So far I like the look of the players we’ve brought in. We just need three or four more to fill the gaps further up the field.