Lucky chinos, playing out from the back, team changes and miserable Tuesday nights – Notes on Cardiff away

Huddersfield Town lost 3-0 to Cardiff last night in a game where the Terriers regularly shot themselves in the foot by making silly defensive errors. The attacking side of our game was almost as bad, as wave after wave of attack harmlessly came to nothing and Cardiff managed to dominate the game despite having very little possession.

Despite there being five changes to the starting lineup, there was a familiar feel to this game. As we messed around with the ball in our own defensive third, struggled to find openings in the final third and lost too many battles in the middle of the park.

Here are a few of my thoughts on the game.

Too many changes to the starting eleven

Trying to second guess Carlos Corberán’s team selection is a fool’s errand, as I’ve found with my predicted lineups this season, but this game’s starting lineup was even more left field than usual. Five changes were made to the starting eleven, which felt like at least a couple too many.

In fairness, Stearman and Bacuna were both injured and we had to make changes but to replace almost half the starting lineup meant we lacked fluency and made it harder for the likes of Ward and Daly to settle in because there was so much other change in the team.

The five changes would have looked inspired if it had led to a victory but too many of the gambles in this team selection failed to pay off. Schindler played like he was still groggy from last week’s head injury, Duhaney looked out of his depth, Ward couldn’t get in the game and Daly struggled until he was hooked at half time. Only Hamer came in and did a decent job (even if he had to pick the ball out of the net three times).

It’s not Carlos Corberán’s fault though, he has to rotate his squad, given the intensity of games and his desire for full-throttle football every game. The bigger issue is the thinness of the squad and lack of quality players we have outside of the starting eleven to come on and change games.

Playing out from the back costs us again

It’s commonplace for teams to have their analysts watch their upcoming opponents and put together reports about how to exploit the weaknesses they discover. Even the laziest analyst could watch back highlights of our recent games and know straight away how to score against Huddersfield Town. It doesn’t take any skill, just push up whenever the keeper has the ball and apply pressure to the defenders until one of them coughs up the ball and gifts you a goalscoring opportunity.

Mistakes are a cost of doing business when you play out from the back but the regularity that we are making them is a serious concern and could derail an otherwise promising season for Town. The players are pathologically opposed to playing long when under pressure and therefore make it easy for our opponents to force errors.

I’m in favour of retaining possession and building up from the back whenever it’s a possibility but when there isn’t an option to play this way it’s better to boot the odd ball up field rather than try and force passes that simply aren’t on.

Jonas Lössl helped previous Town teams to play out from the back because he had an excellent range of kicking, as well as passing long and short he had a sort of middle-distance pass where he’d chip the ball into the full backs or midfielders thirty of forty yards and get them moving up the field. Hamer tries this occasionally but more often puts it out for a throw or gives it to the opposition. But I think it’s something we could try more of to relieve pressure from the central defenders and Hogg, who aren’t good enough on the ball to play this way when under pressure all game.

Another struggle against a physical team

Another of the weaknesses in our current squad is coming up against physical teams. Cardiff had a lot more quality than teams such as Wycombe and Rotherham but still mixed it up a bit and in Keiffer Moore they have a battering ram that also has a lovely touch. Once again we struggled to cope with a team that roughed us up a bit and were strong in the air.

Naby Sarr’s arrival has made us a bit less vulnerable at set pieces but we still struggled at times last night with balls coming into the box, particularly the sequence of long throws that came in (despite then not leading to goals).

It’s hard to know what the answer is to this problem, as we’re always going to look a bit short in comparison to the Championship’s bully boys with a midfield of Eiting, Hogg and O’Brien because all three, for all their qualities, are a bit on the short side. Pritchard’s return from injury isn’t going to help matters either.

Another miserable Tuesday night

This is the second consecutive Tuesday night where Town have turned in a poor performance. After playing well against Middlesborough last Saturday it’s disappointing that we’ve not been able to kickstart a good run by picking up points in Cardiff. While they aren’t a poor side by any stretch, their position in the table shows that they can be beaten by a team like Town’s if we play to our strengths.

Every team is going to struggle to find consistency this season with the number of games that have to be played in a shorter period of time but Town seem to be more erratic than most. The good news about this unpredictability is that one poor performance doesn’t mean we’ll be bad again at the weekend, so there’s hope against QPR.

The real reason Town lost: the lucky chinos

Town faced an uphill battle before a ball was kicked in this game as Carlos opted for black rather than cream chinos. As I covered on the blog on Sunday, Town do significantly better when Carlos is wearing his lucky cream chinos.

As I said in a comment on another post, Big Phil’s priority shouldn’t be to invest in the playing squad but instead in a few more pairs of skinny cream chinos for his head coach. I appreciate that the demands of being a head coach likely mean Corberán didn’t get chance to stick the lucky trouser on a boil wash after Saturday’s victory but given the improved points haul the trousers bring we need to invest in this area.