How Jan Siewert’s last game sums up his time at Town

Jan Siewert was sacked shortly after Town fell to a 2-1 defeat to Fulham on Friday night. It was a game that had several of the hallmarks of Siewert’s time at Huddersfield Town. Individual errors, tactical confusion, a lack of attacking intent and substitutions that were either wrongly timed or simply just wrong.

Here are a few of my thoughts on how this game acted as a 90-minute summary of the Jan Siewert-era:

Individual errors: Bacuna set to self-destruct mode

Before I put the boot into Juninho Bacuna, I’d like to say that I’m generally a fan of his and can see that he has a lot of potential. Now I’ve said that, he was dreadful against Fulham. It’s was the kind of performance where he seemed to have a reverse midas touch: every time he got involved he ballsed it up.

Perhaps with Mooy now gone he fancied himself as the creative force in midfield, as he seemed to want to play 50-yard wonder passes at every opportunity. Unlike Mooy, the majority of Bacuna’s long-range passes went nowhere near their intended recipient.

There was a general sloppiness about Bacuna’s approach to the game that made him a complete liability, so it was no surprise in the second half when he bungled his clearance so badly it gifted Mitrovic an easy header to score. It was the kind of silly mistake that Town make so often and so rarely force their opponents into.

Jan Siewert’s Town teams have regularly conceded goals that were more down to individual’s fouling up than the brilliance of the opposition. It’s hard to blame a coach for his team repeatedly making mistakes that lead to goals but it makes you wonder if the players are playing with so much fear that it forces errors or are perhaps encouraged to take chances in dangerous areas.

Tactical confusion: stranded striker

After a preseason that effectively began in January because of Town’s inevitable relegation, it’s been disappointing that Jan Siewert was never able to get his teams play with any kind of tactical coherence. The 4-3-3 shape was there but the positioning of many of the players looked uncertain and there was a tendency to sit deep at times which invited pressure upon Town’s back line.

Karlan Grant spent the majority of the game a virtual stranger to the rest of his team, as he was so far apart from the nearest player. Even when we had possession in Fulham’s final third, it was hard to see many blue and white shirts in the box. Playing a system that nominally has three forwards in the lineup sounds great but when the wide players are so deep it makes it much closer to 4-5-1 and makes it very hard for the striker to receive quality service.

A lack of attacking intent: failing to create chances

David Wagner’s time at Town saw the team achieve incredible things and these achievements were all the more incredible because of how few goals the teams managed to score. This was something that Jan Siewert had stated as an area he was going to improve under his stewardship and we were promised attacking football. Sadly we got more of the same.

Against Fulham there were spells in the game were Town enjoyed possession in dangerous areas but seemed to lack the creative spark to turn good build up play into clear cut chances. Hadergjonaj finally produced a decent cross for Grant’s goal but otherwise there was a distinct lack of quality in the final third.

With confidence low among the squad, it’s no surprise that our attacking players aren’t banging them in. However, the tactics Siewert has used and his team selections have often limited the amount of attacking freedom in the team and have resulted in a lack of goals.

Poor substitutions: leaving Bacuna on the pitch too long and not unleashing VLP sooner

I’ve always preferred managers that are bold with their substitutions and make changes when they need to be made. Bacuna was having a stinker in the first half and it would have made perfect sense to hook him at half time. Instead he was sent back out and made further mistakes until he cost Town a goal, then Siewert subbed him.

In the second half Fulham dominated the game and hurt Town with their slick attacking play and fluent movement. We looked short of ideas when we were going forward. Adding some attacking flair seemed like a natural choice but van La Parra wasn’t introduced until the 83rd minute of the game when it was too late to make an impact. Before that we brought on Steve Mounié to play up front and our most potent threat, Karlan Grant, was shunted to the wing where he was less of a danger.

Many managers are able to use substitutions to swing the momentum in a game, exploit a weakness or to counter a specific threat from the opposition. Jan Siewert seemed to just chuck players on to give them a run out without much thought to how they might change the course of the game.

TerrierSpirit.com opinion: Siewert wasn’t learning from his mistakes and had to go

From the outside, it’s easy to say that three league games is too short a timespan to judge a manager and Siewert deserved more time. The problem is that he kept on doing the same thing every game regardless of the results on the pitch. He talked a lot about wanting to bring back the winning feeling but it became increasingly clear that he didn’t know how to make that happen.

I’m not going to repeat the well-documented problems Jan had to face when he took charge of Town but he did have an uphill struggle. However, even accounting for the handicaps he had to overcome he performed poorly. Leaving him in his post any longer wouldn’t have been fair to him, the players or the fans.

It’s a shame it didn’t work out but now it’s time to move on and look to the future.