Huddersfield Town were deserved winners against Stevenage in a game where they were consistently on top but struggled to carve out clear cut opportunities. An Alfie May goal, his first from open play for Town, was enough to clinch the three points after a late and limited fightback Stevenage put us under mild pressure.
Despite Stevenage being top of the league before the start of the match, they were not the fierce opponents I was expecting and Town did a good job of limiting their attacking influence and keeping them on the back foot until their late pressure in the closing moments.
Here’s what I made of each individual performance…
Owen Goodman – 7 out of 10
His passing was very good and I’m now trying to accept that passing out from the back is how we do things. While my heart is still in my mouth with both how long he holds the ball and the sorts of passes he sees as being OK, I’m now seeing it as my problem rather than his. He’s doing the job he’s been told to do and doing it well. The few saves he had to make were pretty regulation but that didn’t stop him performing some elaborate dives to spice up the highlight reel.
Lasse Sorensen – 7 out of 10
I thought that Sorensen made too many conservative choices with the ball in the early stages, playing it sideways and backwards rather than moving us up the pitch or putting in a telling cross. Thankfully he improved as the game went on and made some penetrating runs and put in a few decent balls.
Josh Feeney – 7 out of 10
Showed great composure on the ball when under pressure and played some lovely passes. Did the ugly stuff well too and refused to be bullied by their forward line. A very solid outing.
Joe Low – 8 out of 10
Won everything in the air that came near him and was solid as a rock with everything he did. Also showed some fancy footwork to shake off pressure from Stevenage’s attempts at pressing him.
Murray Wallace – 6 out of 10
A much better outing than Tuesday night and added a bit of height, experience and composure at the back. Still didn’t do enough going forward in my eyes and that put pressure on other players to help us move the ball up the field.
Herbie Kane – 8 out of 10
It’s not a bald patch, it’s a solar panel for a passing machine! Playing deep means that he’s not usually the one taking on chances or even making assists but he spreads the ball so nicely and pulls the strings from the base of midfield. If Herbie Kane plays well, Town play well, so it’s good he’s hitting a bit of form.
Ryan Ledson – 7 out of 10
Showed he’s not just a Jonathan Hogg clone with some smart passing to set Town’s attacks off. Though he is also doing all the Hogg-like work of being here, there and every-****ing-where.
Marcus Harness – 7 out of 10
Didn’t have a lot of space to operate in but still managed to pull off some nice linkup play. Great movement as usual and regularly took the ball on the half-turn, so he was able to shake off his marker and run at their back line. I was disappointed to see him subbed off as he was enjoying his best spell of the game and building pressure on Stevenage just before being brought off.
Ben Wiles – 6 out of 10
Did some nice bits of passing and dropped deeper to pick up the ball more often but didn’t have many stand out moments. After getting back in the starting lineup after a good performance from the bench on Tuesday, it’s a shame he’s thrown in another average performance.
Ruben Roosken – 6 out of 10
Did lots of running up his flank and chased many lost causes. There was a spell for about ten or 15 minutes where he kept on being left in acres of space and he was making good progress down his wing. I feel like he could do with adding a trick or flick here and there when running at defenders, as his principal way to best a defender is speed and movement off the ball but good wingers can use trickery to create the openings they need.
Alfie May – 8 out of 10
After doing well to get on the end of several half chances, it was good we managed to provide him with quality service in the box which he finished the second time of asking by being first to the loose ball from his initial shot being blocked. Excellent composure and awareness to get his shot away then follow in to finish the job. Did an awful lot of thankless running to close off their defenders and not let them settle on the ball.
Substitutes
Sean Roughan – 7 out for 10 – Gave Roosken and Ashia much more support, both with quality long balls and overlapping runs. Such an obvious upgrade on Wallace, it feels strange he didn’t start.
Cameron Ashia – 6 out of 10 – Made a few mistakes positionally and wasn’t on the same wavelength as his teammates at times. Though he did make some good runs down the left channel and helped relieve pressure when Stevenage were pushing for an equaliser.
Joe Taylor – 7 out of 10 – Used his pace to unsettle their keeper on numerous occasions and forced him into poor kicks. Went down and looked injured when May scored but sprang up to celebrate, so it can’t have been too bad.
Lynden Gooch – N/A – Made a few useful runs and clearances in the dying stages.
Leo Castledine – N/A – Didn’t get much opportunity as we were defending most of the time he was on the pitch.
I wouldn’t quibble with your ratings TS but I didn’t know solar panels worked in cloudy conditions!
It was never a boring match, but both teams seemed wary of each other. Town were rarely troubled until the closing stages, conversely Stevenage were rarely but slightly more frequently stretched by Town.
There were no poor performances, Sorensen improved as the game progressed, Kane is a delight to watch at times. The back five including substitutes were generally in command with Wallace the least ambitious.
I do like Roosken, he is often in space and controls the ball effortlessly. Roughan was the inspiration for the goal, his acceleration into space and resulting cross were masterful; then May, as occurred earlier didn’t seem to want to score but thankfully changed his mind.
Taylor baffles me in that he doesn’t look like a natural goal scorer, not just in this game but throughout his time at Town, the reported£3 million seems extraordinary especially as he couldn’t get into Luton’s starting team. I can see that May has something about him in this category and will thrive in due course. The injury prone Healy looks the likeliest lad for goal scoring, if he can get fit.
Healey is on loan at Barrow and allegedly already injured so can’t see him scoring for Town any time soon.
Yes, I know, but he always looked competent when playing and he’s tallish. I was dreaming into the distant future!!
His injury within minutes of coming off the bench for them in midweek means he’ll also not be scoring for Barrow anytime soon. Such a shame, as he’d be a great option for Town if he was fully fit. But I suppose, he’d have also not come here if he was fully fit.
Thanks for your comment Beck, it’s a good summary of the game and I don’t disagree with any of it.
I think Taylor has the attributes of a very good striker but we’ve not yet seen them put together in one performance yet. His speed and his relative youth have pushed up his transfer fee. Plus we might have overpaid to ensure we didn’t fail to land our top target again. I believe he’ll come good but I have to admit a lot of that comes from blind faith rather than concrete evidence that he’s produced in games.
It feels cruel to speculate but I’m not sure Healey’s body will ever recover to a point where he can play football at a decent level. Some nasty injuries lead to continual further injuries and he doesn’t seem to be able to break out for that cycle. Also, with all his body has been through with these injuries, even if he is technically “fit”, he might not be a fraction of the player he was before his big injury.
Very Good saves from Stevenage Goalie , prevented the match becoming a cricket 🏏 score. Fair play to Stevenage and there 10 men behind the ball a lot of the time. Counter attacking when they could . Two extremely pleasing things to come from the match. This without doubt , the most commanding match so far the season, that Town have played in . Stevenage top of the league- has we thought, a false position. The stats prove this . Secondly we can improve on the back of this .
UTT- ⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️⚽️
I’d have liked to have seen us create more attempts on Stevenage’s goal to be honest, our play in the final third still lacks a bit of polish at times. Though Stevenage had a strange tendency to make very basic errors just as they entered a dangerous area, so at least we weren’t doing that.
I was unimpressed by Stevenage but they were organised and worked hard, which are qualities that can get you quite far in League One even if it’s dull to watch at times.
I’d agree that Town don’t look the finished article yet. Even though we’re good enough to get wins, I’m hoping we’ll click soon and give a team a real hiding.
I was impressed by Stevenage. They played better football than I expected, although it was a bit one dimensional. The thing I like most is that Kane & Sorenson both looked like the players we thought we had bought last year. Sorenson did have a quiet start but the whole team needed to get the measure of the opposition in the early stages and when he got going he looked excellent. Grant is obviously doing something right.
You can see why Stevenage don’t concede many, they threw themselves at any likely goal bound effort and their keeper is decent. Also their late charge could have undone us except we defended really well. Best game so far for quality from us, though the Leicester game was pretty good. Great to see it starting to properly come together.
Thanks for commenting Mick. I was expecting more fron Stevenage going forward. They were solid, hard working and tried to play football but they made far too many silly mistakes when they had the ball. Perhaps this was thanks to our work rate and pressing. But I don’t expect them to be much better than mid table this season.
It’s a good point about Kane and Sorensen, as both had patchy first seasons but both were great in this game. If Grant can get the best out of Anthony Evans when he returns then last summer’s transfer business will look a lot better than it did at the end of last season.
I agree that this looked a lot more like the way Lee Grant wants us to play, which is encouraging after a difficult night against Doncaster. I think we’re capable of getting even better than this though and I think it will come with time, as the players get more comfortable with this new system.
They have scored 8 goals with 3 scorers. We have scored 10 with 8 scorers which i think is really good. I think we kept their dangerous players well covered, mostly, so more our good play than their poor.
I’d not thought about that but you’re right that we snuffed out Jamie Reid who had scored five in four before this game.
I’m hopeful one or both of May and Taylor will score a lot of goals but having threats all over the pitch makes makes us harder to play against.
My possibly unhealthy interest in clean sheets may be a cause for concern, but to have four clean sheets out of five league games played seems beyond believable .
Its not very clear from TS and the commentators on the actual matches, how Grant has managed to get them to do this – in some of the games it seemed very much more by luck than good management, but its a great habit to have so early in the season.
I’ve always thought that the defence platform has to be right, has to be cast iron, if there is to be any chance of a top table challenge.
Its self evident ,but if you have a clean sheet you cant lose, but you can win.
Can they keep the habit?
Every game has been a bit different, but the Stevenage was the most solid defensive display of the season but it did take away a bit from our attacking potency. In the other games where we’ve kept clean sheets there have been at least a couple of occasions where we made an error that most good teams would punish with a goal.
The new-look defense does have some good players in it, at least from the early impression. Joe Low in particular stands out as being very solid, strong and more mobile than you’d expect someone of his size.
The biggest bonus for us defensively is how organised we are off the ball and how motivated the midfield and attack are to closing down space and restricting opportunities for opponents to get up the pitch. Though the pressing high will probably be exposed at some point by teams that can play well on the break.