How has Carlos Corberán done since arriving at Huddersfield Town from Leeds United?

Obviously, we all know it’s very early days in Carlos Corberán’s time at Huddersfield Town but the international break presents a lull in the season to take stock of how things are going so far.

Corberán took charge of Town shortly after the end of last season and has already overseen a dramatic change in the way Huddersfield Town play and embedded several new players into the team. Here’s an early assessment of how he’s getting on. If you can’t be bothered reading to the bottom, a very quick summary would be that he’s doing pretty good.

A tricky preseason

The implications of the pandemic meant the players had the shortest post-season break ever and Carlos had the shortest ever pre-season to get across his ideas. On top of that Town had played an intense period of games after the restart at the end of last season and several players were carrying knocks that didn’t have time to heal before the new season started.

So it was tough to begin with and then two of the scheduled preseason games were cancelled because of positive coronavirus tests in the Town camp (nobody ever confirmed who it was that tested positive but it was fairly easy to narrow it down to a few likely candidates). So a difficult job was made even harder.

Despite these setbacks and challenges, it was a fairly encouraging preseason. The thinness of our squad and the large number of minor injuries meant there were barely 11 fit senior players. This led to a lot of the academy lads getting minutes with the seniors and several turned in very impressive performances.

In fact, the academy players seemed to adjust to Calros’ tactical system far better than the established players and impressed in the second half of the friendly against Bradford. Josh Austerfield, Ben Jackson, Romoney Crichlow and Aaron Rowe were the players that really stood out but all of the youngsters did themselves credit during preseason.

Despite it being a competitive game, I’m going to include Town’s cup exit to Rochdale as a preseason game. Carlos threw in Hogg and Schindler despite the fact neither had played much of preseason and were recovering from injury, both played poorly as a result. The lacklustre performance made me wonder if the mentality was to treat it as another opportunity to improve fitness rather than a chance to progress in the cup.

Hard opening games against Norwich and Brentford

When the fixture list came out it was obvious we were in for a testing start to the season and that’s how it worked out. Two games, two defeats but very different contexts. The Norwich game was actually not too bad, with Town showing their intention to get forward and attack, even if the fluency up front wasn’t there.

Norwich quite obviously had better individual players than Town but they also looked rusty and struggled to carve out clear chances. The game was decided by a goal that came from a sloppy, under-hit backpass by Richard Stearman while he was still seeing stars from a red card-worthy elbow from Cantwell.

The Brentford game was the worst so far under Corberán and that’s not a surprise given the opposition. Town haven’t made a secret of their ambition to emulate Brentford’s approach and it was clear they are a lot further along the line with their project than Town are with theirs.

Despite Town dominating possession they couldn’t get a foothold in the game and resorted to rolling the ball about at the back for long periods. Town’s spirited defending meant it was a relatively tight game until around 70 minutes, when we started to tire and Brentford exploited the extra space we were allowing them.

In fairness, we lost Schindler and Toffolo to injury in the first half which badly unsettled our back line. There was also a nasty challenge on Bacuna that could have led to a red card and changed the nature of the game.

Brentford haven’t won any of their three other games this season, which makes me think we got something wrong in our approach. I admire the ambition to try and dominate possession in every game but it may be sensible to adjust these tactics against superior opposition to give us a better chance of getting a result.

Carlosball properly starts to emerge with a win and a draw

The most recent two games have been much more pleasing to watch and the “Carlosball” way of playing has been much more evident.

Town’s one-nil victory against Forest was the best outing of the season so far and Town started to show the improvement in fitness since Corberán arrived. The closing stages were a treat to watch from a Town perspective as we kept carving open opportunities and the number of willing runners in the closing stages was evidence of improved fitness.

The only bugbear was that we’d only won 1-0 despite putting in a performance that felt more like a 3-0 or 4-0 but sloppy finishing meant the margin of victory was narrow.

The draw against Rotherham might not seem like a great result but, again, Town put in an impressive second half performance and came from behind with a last minute equaliser from Pipa’s deflected effort. The tendency to let our heads drop when we’ve gone behind is a long-running problem for Huddersfield Town, so coming from behind to pick up a point could be a significant turning point and encourage our players to believe they can always get something out of a game.

Finishing chances was still an issue against Rotherham and we struggled against their physical approach for most of the first half. But we had almost three quarters of the possession and, unlike against Brentford, we had a lot of that possession in Rotherham’s half and managed to open them up with clever switching of play and lung-bursting runs from both wingbacks.

What kind of a manager is Corberán?

I’ve already written about Carlos Corberán’s tactical approach in my “What is Carlosball?” article, so I’ll not repeat it here. But I will say that he’s clearly committed to making Town a more attacking, high tempo, hard pressing team as was promised when he was appointed.

On the touchline Carlos seems very serious and gives out continuous instructions to the players on the pitch, usually looking like he’s about to commit murder. I think this is proof that he knows exactly what he wants to see and will let the players know if they’re not meeting his expectations.

My impression from his behaviour on the touchline and the things players say about him in interviews that Corberán is a bit of an authoritarian. I don’t see this as a bad thing as it seems to be getting more out of the players than previous coaches have managed. Providing the players are bought into his approach, which they seem to be, then being a taskmaster can be a way to get things moving in the right direction.

Carlos’ background as a fitness coach and his work at Leeds alongside Bielsa mean it’s no surprise that fitness has been a key focus of his early stages as manager. He’s brought back double training sessions and introduced the “murderball” sessions that were made famous at Leeds.

What next?

Compared to the rest of the season, September and early October has been a gentle start to the Championship in terms of fixture congestion. Town’s early capitulation to Rochdale in the Carabao Cup meant we’ve not had any midweek games yet and have had the luxury of a full week between every game. The games won’t be as nicely spread out again this season, as we’ve got a lot of games to fit into not a lot of time.

The Swansea game a week on tomorrow will be the first of seven games in three weeks and it will be a real test of how fit our first team are and how ready our backup players are to step in when needed. The intensity on the pitch has gone up a level for Town this season and I’m not sure how our players will respond to the fixture congestion we’re about to experience.

It will also be interesting to see how much Carlos is willing to rotate his players to keep them fresh. While there’s still time to bring in new recruits, we have a much smaller squad of players to work with this season and it’s likely that academy products will be used to fill in the gaps. This should be a good thing in small doses but it’s risky to rely on unproven players too much, which may happen if injuries mount up once the recovery time between games reduces.

So it’s going to be a very interesting three week period with a lot of football to play. Four points from the opening four games is fairly positive given the expectations we had when the fixtures came out. By the time the next international break in November comes around we’ll have a better sense of what we can expect for the season ahead. If we continue with our current ratio of one point per game then it’s likely to be another struggle against relegation. If we can string a few results together then it’s possible we could do a bit better than most fans are expecting. In the Championship the difference between fighting to survive and pushing for the playoffs can be six or seven points, so the margins are very fine.

The next week or so will be key for this season despite it not featuring a game, as getting the closing stages of the transfer window right will have a massive impact on Town’s season. Karlan Grant and Terence Kongolo need to be moved on and first-team ready players need to be brought in. If we manage to do that then we could be in good shape, if we fail to bring in a goalscorer then we’re banking on Carlos being some sort of miracle worker as we don’t look to have a regular source of goals in our squad.

TerrierSpirit.com opinion on Carlos Corberán so far

I’m pleased with the start Carlos Corberán has had at Huddersfield Town so far. He’s got a clear vision about what he wants to do and the style of play he’s introduced is refreshing to watch. It’s based heavily on the model that brought Leeds so much success but Carlos has yet to be backed in the transfer market in the same way Bielsa was at Leeds.

With the right players it’s easy to imagine Town outperforming the modest expectations people have for us this season. Our new coach seems to be getting more out of the players than Danny Cowley or Jan Siewert did and has increased the general level of fitness in the team dramatically. This increased focus on fitness and intensive training has led to more soft tissue injuries and led to us looking fatigued in the closing stages of our earlier games but the long-term benefits should outweigh these short-term consequences.

There’s still plenty that could go wrong with Carlos Corberán at Huddersfield Town. The more attacking approach leaves us looking very open at the back, the emphasis on possession can be boring if not done correctly and the number of injuries to key players is a worry. But the early signs are positive and I’m excited to see what happens next.