Huddersfield Town were once more the victims of refereeing technology failing spectacularly. While the failure of VAR to pick up two blatant penalties in the playoff final may have cost us hundreds of millions of pounds and a place in the Premier League (yes, I’m still not over it), yesterday’s goal line technology malfunction merely cost us a goal which could have earned us a Championship point. The stakes were lower but the error was far more blatant and ultimately it could end up being a factor in how long Danny Schofield stays in his job.
The goal that wasn’t allowed has to be the first thing that is discussed but in fairness, Huddersfield Town were once again poor and struggled with all the same issues that have led to them having such a poor start to the season. So while we can curse our bad luck at a good goal not being awarded, we should have been able to create more than that against such an average Blackpool team that showed very little ambition on the day.
Here are a few of my thoughts on the game and Town’s situation at the moment…
Playing out from the back can be painful to watch at times
I thought that Blackpool were mostly toothless and we didn’t need to worry about them too much. They had one winger that was a bit tricky at times and Poveda from Leeds had some good moments but otherwise they were a very ordinary side, nowhere near the team they were last season when Keshi Anderson and Josh Bowler tore us to shreds on either wing.
So it was disappointing that we were our own worst enemy with our passing out from the back. Experienced and usually reliable players like Jonathan Hogg and Lee Nicholls both made unforgivable errors in possession, which could have led to goals against a more clinical team.
This isn’t an isolated problem either, we’ve been doing this all season and it’s something that cost us dearly the season before last but we managed to stamp out of our game last season. To see these sloppy errors creep back in again is very worrying. All Blackpool had to do is lie in wait and gobble up the opportunities when they came their way. If they took the chances we gifted them they could have easily scored more.
Perhaps the simple solution is just to have better players in the back line, Luke Mbete is coming from Manchester City so surely has to be comfortable with the ball at his feet. Pep wouldn’t entertain a defender that wasn’t able to pass like a midfielder. Helik isn’t as comfortable on the ball but neither is Pearson but importantly, both have the experience not to try anything daft and I suspect both have the confidence to ignore coaching instructions and boot it long rather than try to persist with tippy tappy football when a simple hoof to relieve pressure is the right option.
Town look like a relegation team… at the moment
Early in the season you can say the league table is meaningless and there’s no point in looking at it but I think we’ve gone past that point now and our position in the relegation zone is deserved based on our performances and results so far. We have played enough games to know where we stand in the scheme of things and if nothing changes between now and the end of the season we’re going to go down.
I’m not too worried by that last sentence though because there’s plenty of time and obviously plenty will change between now and next May. Town MUST get better and it’s likely the teams around us will get worse too. It’s a worry that we’ve played teams such as Bristol City, Birmingham and Blackpool and seen that they clearly aren’t all that special but we have still lost to them anyway. That suggests that a season of struggle lies ahead of us.
But the fact that we are losing these games by narrow margins shows that the changes required for Town aren’t huge. OK, we concede too many soft goals, we lack presence in midfield and we don’t create enough chances for our forwards. Urgh, actually, that sounds pretty much like there are fundamental problems in every area of the pitch. I’ve depressed myself. But a lot of these problems suddenly evaporate with a couple of wins when momentum swings the other way and confidence in the squad turns the other way.
The problem is that I can’t see how Town are going to get a couple of wins to change their momentum as they keep repeating the same mistakes in every game. Perhaps Helik and Mbete might give the team a lift when they come in but that’s expecting an awful lot.
Some players did pretty well at times
Despite the fact we lost and overall the performance was poor, I thought there were a couple of decent performances. Sorba Thomas played pretty well and put in some very good balls which didn’t have enough Town players trying to get on the end of them. Jack Rudoni was also doing everything he could to try and register his first Town goal, getting closer and closer with his shooting from range, as well as showing a good range of creative passing in the middle of the park.
Then there is Pat Jones, who continues to provide a creative spark from the bench whenever he comes on. It’s tempting to say that he should be given a start but I’m not sure if that kind of pressure might stifle him and he may be better reserved as an impact sub so his pace can be even more deadly against tired legs. He certainly looks like he can be a danger at this level and Blackpool’s defence seemed terrified whenever he was on the ball and running at them.
This team is not “too good to go down”
I worry that there may be a belief behind the scenes at Town that we’re too good to be genuinely at risk of going down this season and that we are currently in a false position in the table. That would explain why we were willing to loan out players to strengthen potential relegation rivals like Wigan and Rotherham. It would also make sense of why we gambled on giving the head coach job to someone who has never done the job before.
While our team is littered with talented players that may one day go on to play at a higher level and experienced pros that know this division well, we can not take our ability to survive in the Championship for granted.
I worry that we don’t have the character or the style of play for a relegation fight. The other teams at the bottom end of the Championship will dig in and scrap for every single point they can get to stay in the division while we have players like Jon Russell that try to do Cruyff turns in their own half and stumble straight into opposition players. It’s not nice to pick on individual players but the point I’m making is that we are still trying to play the fancy football that helped us with a promotion push despite that fact we are in the bottom three and showing no signs of pulling out of our downward spiral. Jon Russell isn’t the problem, he just a handy example because he can be used to symbolise the broader issue with our whole squad: we want to do the fancy stuff but struggle too much with the fundamentals.
Empty seats will worry the board more than the boos at the final whistle
The official attendance announced for yesterday’s game was over eighteen thousand but anyone with eyes knows that the actual number of bottoms on seats in the stadium was many thousands below that. The club have long since stopped announcing the proper attendance, the official number is “tickets sold” which includes season ticket holders that haven’t turned up, which looked to be many, many thousands fewer based on the large gaps that could be seen at kick off yesterday.
Admittedly, it’s still the school holidays and many people are still away but I think the club will be worried that Town’s poor start and the lacklustre leadership of Danny Schofield may have turned off many Town fans with only a handful of games played. It’s understandable too, with the way the team are playing this season being so feckless at times and the errors being repeated from one game to the next with no obvious signs that they are going to be rectified.
I’ll talk more specifically about Danny Schofield’s job security later, but the fact that many fans are staying away points towards a growing apathy among the fan base that’s a bigger worry than the anger that the post-match booing points towards. Anger is good in many ways, because it shows fans care. You need that. Apathy is bad because it shows fans have stopped caring and are looking for better things to do with their Saturday (or in this case Sunday) afternoons.
I don’t think it’s time to sack Schofield…yet
I’ve seen a lot of fans calling for Schofield to go but if I was in charge I wouldn’t get rid of him just yet. He’s not covered himself in glory yet but I think there is still time for him to turn things around. There are three games to go before the international break, so it seems reasonable to give him until then to see how he does. If we are still playing poor football and haven’t picked up any meaningful results then it may be better to get rid and get a new head coach in during the international break.
It’s never an easy decision to sack a manager but I think Danny Schofield deserves a bit more leeway than usual because he didn’t ask for the role, he had it thrust upon him, it landed in his lap at very short notice with almost no preparation time before the season started and with a squad that was in the middle of a fairly significant transition that is still taking place now as the deadline day signings are being integrated into the group.
I’ve been fairly unimpressed by Danny Schofield so far as a head coach. I think his selections, in-game tactics, substitutions and man management all seem a bit below par but that’s all from the perspective of an outside observer.
With coaches like Corberan, Wagner and even the Cowleys they seemed like they were obssessed with football and every detail was being agonised over in every game. With Schofield I get more of a sense that he’s turning up for work every day and hoping the lads all have a nice day and three points will be a bonus. I could be wrong but he seems too nice to be a head coach or manager at this level. For example, imagine how Neil Warnock would have reacted at full time yesterday if a perfectly good goal wasn’t given for one of his teams. He wouldn’t have approached the referee looking like this:
You’re becoming irritatingly reasonable, TS!! Aren’t you absolutely gutted by what’s going on? A few people seem to think if there’s not some positivity from you or a contributor and you end with ‘UTT’, then you’re just fuelling the fire of self destruction.
I think we’re perfectly entitled to express unqualified dissatisfaction, anger, frustration, and all the rest. I realise we all see things differently; some of the longstanding supporters (I go back to 63/64 season) have seen these things too many times before; there’s that prevailing smell in the air, and it is saying “we’re rubbish and we’ve no idea how we can make it better with the squad we have”.
I think I posted here that the next 2 matches (Bristol City & Blackpool) would be the barometer of the level we’re at. Well we now know.
I feel like there should be a new slogan for any potential new Town fans, if there are any, and it would be “Abandon hope all ye who enters here.”
Watching Town this season reminds me of the style of play they adopted under Senor Corberan in the season before last; playing out nervously from the back and looking to have time on the ball – which clearly doesn’t work. Last season we had a defence that was good enough to play deep, allow the opposition possession and playing on the break – precisely what Blackpool did to us yesterday. It was always going to be a tough task for Danny Schofield and it is really of little surprise that the team has started the season so slowly. The new recruits should help to shore up the defence over the coming weeks, but I really think that Danny needs to change his tactics when this happens. Tino is undoubtedly talented, but isn’t getting involved enough and it might be worth starting with Holmes, for his energy and workrate, with Tino coming on as a potential second half game changer.
Just to reiterate my comments on Saturday morning.Scholfield should go and a change of direction is necessary from the ownership.I agree with Simon that TS is being too reasonable,he needs some fire in his belly and passion going forward.
“Abandon hope all ye who enters here.”… yeah, of course. We’re Town fans, aren’t we? 🙂
But I agree with TS: it would hardly be productive (nor fair) to not give DS time until the international break to turn things around. However, if the points on the board haven’t at least doubled by that time, it’s definitely time to say good bye. Being a player legend gives you some leeway, but sadly it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll ever be a good coach.
Still, I’m _glad_ to have a coach who can shake hands with the referee after the game regardless of what he thinks about the officials’ decisions. Referees surely get it wrong sometimes, but it’s rarely their mistakes that decide the games, but all the mistakes made by the players and the managers. Judging from images from all kinds of angles, that goal should’ve stood. But the referees didn’t see all those angles.
And in any case: Town should’ve won this game regardless of that goal. According to Infogol, Blackpool only had that (double) chance all game. A chance created by a Town player mistake. Town had seven decent or half-decent scoring opportunities, but failed to convert at least six of them.
I agree. I don’t want to see Schofield behaving like Warnock either.
TS, I agree with Simon you are being far too reasonable, yet you write in a way that the inevitable conclusion is indeed inevitable. Town have played the same way in pretty much every match and this is plainly not good enough.
The inability to pass the ball has now become endemic as most of the team took in turns to display their incompetence.
I was struck by the number of occasions when for no apparent reason a cluster of blue and white shirts would be in close proximity with barely a tangerine shirt in sight. The structure of the team is wrong, emphasised by the number of second balls gathered with considerable ease by the opposition.
Anjorin lost the ball on numerous occasions possibly because he couldn’t trust himself to pass to anyone, but he was poor anyway. The list of players who were devoid of criticism is small; Rudon & Jones definitely and maybe at a pinch Turton, Nakyama & Thomas but I struggle to pen those three.
As usual before writing this I have tried not see or read comments after the game so I don’t know whether the complaints about the goal were justified, although I heard murmurings about the replacement ball not having a chip in it, if that’s the case who’s responsible the club or the officials either way at least one is substandard – I know who my money is on!
I do know we were pretty useless until Hogg went off and Jones and surprisingly Holmes came on and as the pair did a reasonable job as impact subs meaning the closing stages offered some hope.
It’s clear that new players are needed – too late for that. In that case fresh voices and ideas are a necessity if the unthinkable is to be avoided.
Well, I made the mistake of watching on ifollow before going to watch my local team in Spain. They play in the 4th division regional league ,score 2-2 much more enjoyable than Town’s game, and cheaper €4 .
Like Simon I’ve watched Town on and off for a long time ,Frank Worthington, Trevor Cherry et.al. Now that was entertaining, goals were scored not just from crosses into the box. It seems like if the wingers have an off day, that’s it . Oh for a decent midfielder along side Rudoni and a striker to run at the defenses. Return to pessimism for all.
Leave Schofield alone. It is not his fault that Town lost 4 of their best players plus Pearson through injury and replaced them with mainly lower division free transfer players plus paid a little for a couple of other players. Town have become a joke under Dean Hoyle not Schofield he deserves a medal for working for Hoyle. He wants his money back and is now cutting his losses.
In my opinion he has failed miserably in comparison to the chairman of similar sized clubs such as Crystal Palace Brentford Brighton Fulham Bournemouth and othersThe only real time he spent money he wasted it and got us into the trouble we are now in.
Don’t blame Schofield if Town go down he’s doing his best with what Hoyle has oven him to work with.
Stephen Bates
Australia
Schofield’s team selection, formation, playing people out of position etc is NOT down to Hoyle. He has also admitted to having input in signings,
You and the comments are all insightful and perfectly reasonable. And, like so many Town fans, I was a massive Schofield fan and wanted him to succeed.
But I drove up on Sunday morning and as soon as I saw the starting 11 I wished I’d gone to church.
How could anyone think that was the right back three? No bite in midfield. No confidence to hit Sorba early and play Pat Jones in when he made runs behind.
Blackpool were awful and finally took one of the chances we gifted them, but the ‘goal that wasn’t’ and Tino’s brace against WBA just paper over the cracks that we have a young, inexperienced coach who needs to be taken out of the firing line and become an assistant to whoever we bring in (If that doesn’t send us on a 17-game winning run I don’t know what will).
Pretty bad officiating compounded a flat performance. I feel sorry for Schofield but we need a motivator who will sort this team out. We’ve had a raw deal from the EFL’s refs recently but I sense some apathy from the fan base, basically we’ve been let down and some may be thinking what’s the point when you don’t get a fair deal? Leaving Wembley knowing Moss’ awful performance cost us millions left a really sour taste.
If Town loose There Next 3 Games its Time To Say Goodbye To Schofield His Tactics are Woefull LEGEND or Not Ruffles Hogg out of Postion Russell is Terrible No Midfield Players Confused At What There Doing We Will be Cut of At The Bottom Of The Table if We Dont Get Rid of Schofield We Need A Manager who Can Show Passion on The Touchline Step Forward Neil Warnock untill The End of The Season
Timing is often critical in football and leaving the problem until after the International break , will I am afraid may be too late.
We need a manager who has the respect or the fear of the players ,as I see it far to many coasting at the moment ,only Turton ,Rudoni and Yuta came out with much credit from Sunday. Did you notice second half , a break in play some taking drinks and advice from the management ,another four or five having a chat in the centre circle.
We need to stop playing players out of position ,move the ball much quicker , and get away from this ridiculous system of playing out from the back , we cannot do it ! Lets get back to basics ,get the ball out of our area and into the oppositions area as many times as we can .
So we are chasing the game at home for at best 1 point very hopefully 3. Then Pat comes on and breathes some life into the situation, but the number of strikers stays the same one off one on. Surely we have nothing to lose by this time , why can’t we just go for it ? at that time the seasiders were rattled. We are soft also, if Millwall had been denied a goal there would have been at least 11 around the ref, but we just seem to accept crap like this.
The heading should have read “It is time to sack Schofield” and if it doesn’t happen now, it will (or should be!) in the next couple of weeks. It is not Schofields fault. He wasn’t going to turn down the job so he has really been dropped in it. If Town had signed a non-league player, they would have probably sent him out on loan to get experience. So what’s different about employing a totally inexperienced head coach There is no way that Schofield should be the head coach of a Championship side. He should have begun at Park Avenue or somewhere and worked his way up through the leagues. People keep saying, give him 10 matches but the character of a person doesn’t change overnight and he is a nice bloke who just doesn’t have the personality or drive to do the job. Corberan was a football fanatic who was able to adjust his tactics to find success with the players at his disposal (though even he realised it was unlikely work a second time). Maybe Schofield will develop into a good coach who can do the same but we just can’t wait until we are in League 1 before we find out.
On the disallowed goal the EFL have now come out with a statement saying that Hawk-Eye wasn’t tracking the ball at that moment (Oops Sorry!!). There is too much reliance on technology by the referees. It should just be a backup to what they and the linesmen see as it has been for the last 100 years of football.
If you give Schofield the 10 games suggested and we don’t accumulate any further points from the next 3 games, which is a possibility, that will leave us with 4 points from 30. Imagine having a 26 point deduction at the beginning of the season but instead of having 46 games to try to turn things around you have 36? This is the position we are likely to be in give the odd point if we are lucky again, so I’m afraid he needs to go now, the sooner the better. Schofield was always going to be high risk but now that risk has increased immensely and the odd win or draw here or there is not going to fix the problem we need an experienced 1st team coach with proven ability.
I sacked my season card just before Covid. The reason was simple, entertainment value, and the last straw was taking the knee. I listen to the game every week, and I do wonder what Mr Hoyle has in mind for the team/club? I have grave doubts that the quality is good enough. Where do we go from here, I know it’s early in the season but if those clubs just above us start to pull away we will be in the dodo?