Huddersfield Town were beaten 4-1 at the John Smith’s Stadium by West Ham, the first team to take six points from us this season. It was a dispiriting performance from Town, where every player fell short of the standard required and the tactics didn’t work.
West Ham deserve credit too. Their game plan worked well, exploiting our habit of playing out from the back and getting their best players one on one against our defenders when they attacked.
Joe Lolley: from the ridiculous to the sublime
Lolley’s performance was the main talking point at half-time for both good and bad reasons. Lössl played the ball out to him when marked and West Ham hustled him out of possession and Mark Noble scored a gift of a goal. The keeper was at fault for a poor pass but Lolley’s touch let him down and he coughed up the ball too easily.
It was clear from the stands that Lolley wanted to put things right after his howler, and he did so in fine fashion. He jinked his way into a good position in the box and curled a lovely ball the right side of the far post. Keeping possession when he ran at the West Ham defence in the build-up to the goal wasn’t a fluke either, he had a couple of similar runs prior to his goal which looked dangerous.
I’ve always really wanted Lolley to do well at Town but, for various reasons, I don’t think we’ve seen the best of him. He was dubbed the “non-league Messi” when we signed him, and he’s not delivered enough yet. However, regardless of his shortcomings, he’s now someone that’s scored a great goal in the Premier League. If he does nothing else for Town at this level, he’ll always have that goal.
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Playing out from the back
I’ve seen a lot of criticism of Lössl’s distribution after this defeat. The pass out to Lolley was a bad decision but the principal of playing the ball out from the back isn’t wrong just because of the odd mistake. Lumping the ball up the field occasionally is a legitimate tactic but if you do that all the time then it’s hard to retain possession and our system wouldn’t work.
David Wagner isn’t a longball manager, so it’s not likely he’ll change the system. I’m sure Lössl will be more cautious with his passing out from the back, but he’ll still try to get the ball to players feet more often than not.
Lössl’s generally very good at passing the ball out, the problem is that over-confidence in both his and his colleagues’ abilities puts us under pressure at times. I noticed earlier in the season that he tends to target Aaron Mooy for his midrange passing out to feet, which is perfect because Mooy’s ball retention is excellent. This may be a way to avoid mistakes like Lolley’s against West Ham, as there’s almost no chance we’d have conceded if Mooy had have been in Lolley’s place for that pass.
Going behind and losing our heads
This season Town have lost games heavily too often. I think this is mostly because we lose our composure after first going behind and make it easy for the opposition to score again quickly after taking the lead. We push up too far, leave ourselves open and try too hard to score straight away.
In both the West Ham and Leicester defeats so far in 2018 we’ve looked very poor after going behind early in the second half. Our fullbacks seemed to abandon their posts and play as wingers, given Lanzini and Arnautovic the ability to run Zanka and Schindler ragged.
I wouldn’t particularly mind our tendency to concede when we’re behind if we also managed to crack the opposition open and score goals but this rarely happens. Our plan B is to bomb forward and get picked off on the break. Organised opposition easily cope with the extra bodies coming forward and simple balls forward leave us exposed.
The introduction of Kongolo and switch to three at the back seemed to neutralise West Ham’s threat and at least allowed us to stem the flow of goals in the closing stages of the game. It would be interesting to see how this system worked for Town in a game we weren’t already losing by a three-goal margin.
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West Ham: our worst two performances
The home and away games against West Ham were different kinds of performances but both were poor. This home defeat feels a lot worse than the game in London, we were too easy to beat and every single player failed to perform to their potential.
It’s frustrating because West Ham haven’t been much of a team this season, but we’ve had a bad day on both occasions we’ve met them. If we’d have played our best then it would have been likely to be enough to win the game. As it was we deserved nothing.
This season has been strange because we’ve got very little recent history with most of the teams in the Premier League, so there’s not much of a narrative going into games. Next season, should Town stay up, I’ll be looking forward to our next game against West Ham, so we can take revenge for these two beatings we’ve received.
A bad performance doesn’t make us a bad team
One thing I’ve seen from the over-the-top social media reactions to this defeat is an assumption that Town’s players didn’t have a bad game yesterday, they ARE bad and will stay that way.
That’s not true. The team we put out yesterday had enough ability to perform far better than they did on the day. Nobody really knows why teams occasionally collectively fail to turn up, but it happens and doesn’t mean it’s over for them.
I’ve seen unpleasant comments about Ince, van La Parra, Smith, Malone, and Zanka. Some completely writing them off. While all of those players have struggled individually at times this season, they’ve all had great games too. They might not have been good yesterday, but I’m certain they’ll come good in future games.
Pritchard should give us creativity
One of the biggest positives I was able to take away from yesterday’s game was the brief cameo from Pritchard at the end. It was too short to get a proper sense of what he’s capable of, but he looked good in the few minutes he was on the pitch.
His set pieces had menace to them, he took up good positions, and looked like he’s got the skill and vision to open opposition defences. There was a lovely backheel to Depoitre that nearly came off and a couple of well-weighted through balls that gave me much cause for optimism.
He’s got to adjust to our tactics, training regime and his new surroundings, so maybe we shouldn’t expect too much from him just yet. But regardless, I’m expecting a lot from him.
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Stoke away is a BIG game
Next weekend’s trip to the potteries is now a game that has a lot riding on it. The two following league games are against Liverpool and Manchester United, so it’s our most winnable fixture for a little while.
Our league position is still good, we’re fourteenth, but things are tightly packed in the bottom-half of the table. We’re inevitably going to start sinking further down the table if we don’t register a win fairly soon.
Stoke are exactly the kind of team we need to beat to retain our position in the Premier League. Despite the manner of our defeat against West Ham, I’m optimistic. David Wagner has often managed to get his players to bounce back after bad defeats and I trust him to do it again at the Britannia Stadium next week.
Another good and accurate report. Spot on. Lolly could, and possibly should, have passed the ball back to Lössl but why do we concede so many goals just after half time?