“Lots of work to do” – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 2-1 victory over AFC Fylde

Huddersfield Town beat Fylde 2-1 in their second preseason friendly on Saturday afternoon. Thankfully, it’s an established fact that friendlies don’t really mean much beyond being a good workout for the players while they get back up to full speed in time for a new season. This is a relief, as Town were pretty dreadful in the first half before looking a bit more like it in the second half.

The game did give us a good look at the squad, with 22 players getting 45 minutes under their belts. There were some good bits and some bad bits but my overwhelming takeaway was that there’s a lot of work to do with this squad before it’s ready for competitive football in a few weeks time. Both the style of play and the squad composition need some fairly major tweaking to get it into the right place, which I’ll go into in more detail below. 

A pretty shabby first half showing

Lineup: Young, Gooch, Balker, Whatmough, Roughan, Harness, Brierley, McGuane, Mumba, Fletcher, Taylor

The game got off to a dreadful start when Lyden Gooch was left for dead by Dylan Allen-Hadley, with their pacey winger making Gooch look like he was trying to run in Dr Marten boots. To make it worse, once his man got past him, he just gave up even the pretense of trying to defend. Allen-Hardy struck a low cross that wasn’t dealt with by Whatmough at the near post, leaving a loose ball to be stabbed into an open goal by Jack Morris. While it’s only a friendly, this goal featured the kind of generous defending that became a hallmark of Huddersfield Town last season. A really poor start.

Town didn’t have to worry about Fylde’s goalscorer, Jack Morris, for much longer. Soon after their goal, he had his afternoon cut short when Sean Roughan bundled him over the advertising hoardings and he cracked his head open. Watching it through Town-tinted-glasses, you could argue that it was just two players competing for a ball and coming together but it seemed overly aggressive from Roughan. 

So the opening of this game was overshadowed by one of Town’s fullbacks deciding not to bother defending and the other one taking defending right up to the line where it’s bordering on assault. Both Roughan and Gooch could do with meeting each other in the middle somewhere.

It has to be said that Fylde played really well during the first half and showed an ability to play out from the back, withstand an aggressive press and to show a bit of creativity in the final third. It’s strange to watch a team in the sixth tier of English football try and play Guardiola type football but it worked for them in the first half and they deserved to go in one-nil up at half time. 

Town might not have dominated possession and gave away further chances beyond the one they conceded from but there were some decent attacks for Town in this half too. Harness hit the post, Taylor hit the bar and there were several other decent scoring opportunities that we carved out. 

I thought Ethan Brierley looked pretty decent as a deep-lying central midfielder and sprayed some eye-catching passes around. I’m not sure he and Marcus McGuane are a natural pairing though, as it felt like both wanted someone else to do the defensive legwork so they could be the ball player. One partnership that did look promising was Fletcher and Taylor as a strike pairing. While Taylor didn’t find the net, he got into some excellent shooting positions and a couple of times he was cleverly picked out by Fletcher. It’s 18 months too late, but we may have finally found a way to get the best out of Joe Taylor. 

Bali Mumba had some decent moments playing as a left winger. After last season’s attempts to convert Miller and Roosken from wingbacks to wingers, you’d think we’d learn but on this evidence he looked a lot more convincing in this role than the other two. Though looking at his stats, he’s played left midfield more than any other position, so perhaps he’s naturally suited to this role. 

While we had some decent chances and Fylde only scored once, I did come away from this half feeling like we’d seen last season’s Town team. While it wasn’t as clearly our first choice XI as the one we played in the first half against Birmingham the week before, every player selected probably expects to feature prominently in the upcoming season, so it’s a mild concern that we struggled to hold the ball so much against a team that’s playing in National League North.

A much improved second half showing

Lineup: Young, Bronkhorst, Wallace, Low, Sway, Sorensen, Ledson, Kasumu, Iorpenda, Evans, Sebine

Despite the lineup for the second half looking weaker than our first XI, there was a noticeable improvement in nearly every area of the pitch after the break. Town looked a lot more like a team taking on an opponent three divisions beneath them. Our tempo was good, we pressed high, our passing was sharper and we weren’t making silly mistakes. Simple stuff but a huge improvement nonetheless. 

Town didn’t have to wait long to see their improved performance result in an equaliser. Anthony Evans used some fancy(ish) footwork to create space for a cross from deep. Joe Low, still up from a corner, took a lovely first touch before taking on a swivelling shot straight into the floor which bounced up and over the outstretched keeper, levelling the scores. More of a striker’s goal than a central defender’s, which makes me wonder if we should chuck him up front in games when we’re chasing a goal. 

Jay Sway and Tom Iorpenda linked up nicely down the left side of the pitch, with Sway having a fairly decent penalty shout turned down after he fell over in the box. The ref gave a corner which Town then scored from, so we didn’t need the penalty anyway.

Anthony Evans delivered a lovely near-post corner, which Ledon’s run intercepted perfectly to apply what Ron Atkinson would have called “putting the eyebrows on it”, as his deft header gently bent the ball’s trajectory into the net. 

There were a flurry of decent chances shortly after our second, with Iorpenda hitting the crossbar and Sorensen’s offside goal being the pick of the moves. There were about ten minutes where Fylde couldn’t live with us and we looked like a really exciting, attacking team. 

The pace tailed off back to the typical friendly speed as the half wore on but Town were the dominant team throughout and continued to create chances when they went forward. Iorpenda, Sway and Sebine all stood out as useful creative outlets and showed that Drury has been correct to integrate them into the first team squad this preseason.

Ilias Bronkhorst got his first minutes for Town in the second half and looked pretty decent. He’s not especially quick but looked solid in possession and defended his flank a lot better than Gooch had in the first half. The most eye-catching element of his performance was his long throws, with one attacking throw finding the near corner of the six yard box, which won Town a corner. The nice thing is that he’s in a position where he’s taking all the throw-ins on his side anyway, so even in defensive situations, he’s able to use his long throws to move us further up the pitch quickly. 

I spent a lot of the second half pondering why the first half felt bad to watch and this half felt a lot better. My impression was that the biggest change was the effort, energy and commitment was there in the second half but not in the first. I won’t name names but a few of our first half team played like they’d had too many hot dinners, happy to let the game get away from them. The second half team played with more fire in their bellies. With all the talk coming from the club about producing a team that fans can be proud of, I hope the coming season has more performances like our second half than our first. But if we’re struggling against teams so far beneath us in the football pyramid, it’s clear that there’s lots of work to do between now and the start of the season.

We need wingers

Town change shape a few times in this game but for most of the two halves we played with two wingers. Harness and Mumba in the first half, Iorpenda and Sorensen in the second. None of those four are the typical, chalk-on-the-boots type of winger that Town need right now, so it makes our transfer priorities pretty clear.

It’s been widely rumoured that Fernandes from Excelsior in the Netherlands is on the verge of signing for Town but his arrival alone won’t plug the gap we have in wide areas. At least one but ideally two more wingers should be at  the top of our shopping list.

Though Town may find their squad is already too bloated and we might need to ship a few players out before buying too many new additions.

AOB

‘Ow much? – I was one of the people silly enough to spend £5 to watch a stream of this game and I accept that it wasn’t the best fiver I’ve ever spent. The club are entitled to charge what they like for these streams and then it’s up to us fans to decide what they’re willing to pay. Maximising revenue seems to be the watchword at Town at the moment, so charging for friendly streams makes sense with that mindset. However, I think it might be smarter to put these games on for free to try and see it as a way to promote season cards and ticket sales for the upcoming season.

Who was missing? Herbie Kane and Cam Ashia are presumably still injured, with both still missing. It wouldn’t stun me if both are sold in the next few weeks. Bojan Radulovic’s continued absence is more of a worry, if he misses Tuesday’s games he’ll have missed most of our preseason games and will be a doubt for the start of the season. Dan Vost was the only other absence that I can think of, possibly because we’re overstocked in midfield and didn’t need him, or he’s injured or he’s lined up for a loan move. 

Is Drury camera shy? Martin Drury spoke in his manager announcement video about how the media work is something that he doesn’t like. So it’s no surprise that he didn’t provide any pre or post match comments for this game. It’s a shame though, as those interviews are a way for the manager to communicate their ideas to fans. We’ve seen how past Town managers have built loyalty among fans (Warnock’s pressers were typically more entertaining than the football his Town teams played) and how they can alienate fans (see Fotheringham’s unhinged comments in the media). Drury could have used preseason to practice getting more comfortable talking to the media but seemingly he prefers to swerve these duties whenever he can.

Alnwick’s finger tape woes – One of the slightly puzzling moments of this game came when Jak Alnwick was subbed on 3 minutes into the second half rather than at half time like our ten other changes. Apparently he wasn’t ready when the second half started because he hadn’t taped his fingers up, according to Kaine Hall on the commentary. That’s something I don’t think I’ve heard of before. Hopefully he’ll be better prepared if we need to call upon him during a real game.