Nathan Jones: angry toddler, Mbete’s hattrick, B-Team talent, Sorba’s redemption, Fotheringham’s enthusiasm – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s draw with Luton

Huddersfield Town earned their first away point of the season on Tuesday night when they drew 3-3 with Luton. Having led the game twice, you could argue this was a lost opportunity for an away win but the stats from the game and the trickiness of the opponent make it hard to see this as anything but a well-earned point on the road.

Mark Fotheringham is in the very early days of his time at the club but there are already glimmers of the ideas he wants to instill in his players and it looks encouraging. It was far from a perfect performance but Town did at least look to battle and the majority of the players that were given a chance made the step up, with one notable exception.

Here are some of my thoughts on the game.

Mbete’s unfortunate hattrick

Mbete is only 19 years old and has barely played any senior football, so it’s not fair to write him off at this stage of his football career. However, it is worth asking serious questions about whether he’s playing at the right level for his current abilities. He was completely out of his depth when paired up against Adebayo on Tuesday night and all three of Town’s goals came from basic errors from Mbete. 

Loans are meant for young players to go out and get experience and build confidence. Making a few mistakes and learning from them is part of that process but I can count at least five goals that Mbete’s been directly at fault for from only a handful of appearances, so I think we’re now in the territory of those mistakes actually being damaging to the young  player’s confidence and having potential to doing harm to him. That’s before you consider the harm it’s doing to Town’s prospects.

When you consider that we’ve farmed out our own decent prospects like Edmonds-Green and Crichlow to make space for Mbete, it’s hard to justify continuing with him if he continues to play like this. Unless there is a big uptick in form I think it might be worth sending him back to Man City and just accepting that it didn’t work out. 

My worry is that the decision to give Mbete minutes may be partly motivated by the terms of the loan deal as it’s common for a certain number of minutes to be guaranteed as part of these deals. Or we may be hoping to keep Manchester City sweet with the hopes of better prospects being loaned to us in the future. This is fine when the loanees are playing well but it doesn’t serve the club or the player to keep putting the player in the team when it’s obviou they aren’t capable of coping with football at this level.

Nathan Jones has the emotional maturity of a toddler that’s just dropped his ice cream

Draws can leave you not sure how to feel. Are you happy to have scraped a point or gutted you didn’t take all three? I was a bit uncertain until I saw Nathan Jones having his, now traditional, post-match meltdown in front of the press after playing us. I thought he might have spent his time since last May’s playoff semi-final growing as a person and moving on from the disappointment and trying to improve. Nope, he’s just stewed and become even more bitter.

I don’t usually bother watching the other team’s manager’s comments after the games as they spout the same old drivel but Jones’ is worth watching just for the levels of self pity and delusion he reaches. He absolutely hates Huddersfield Town, wouldn’t give a single speck of credit either for last season’s playoff semi or Tuesday’s draw. Judging from his comments, I think he genuinely hates us.

Hearing Luton’s manager embarrass himself in the media is a funny thing, because if you look at what he’s achieved with his club it’s absolutely incredible. On paper he’s one of the best managers operating anywhere in football at the moment when you consider what he’s achieved with the resources he’s been provided with. But when you hear him talk it’s hard to have any respect at all to someone that’s so unpleasant a person and so bitter about the smallest pieces of misfortune.

Sorba Thomas gets back to his best

It’s not been a great few months for Sorba Thomas but I think this game was the best performance we’ve seen from him all season. All three goals came from his set piece deliveries and he put in some excellent crosses from open play too. There seemed to be a renewed sense of purpose about his play too, dropping back to wingback didn’t seem to blunt his attacking purpose and he gave his defensive duties a good go.

Thinking back, his best spell of last season came when he was playing as a wingback too. At the time I remember I thought that he would have been able to play with more freedom and attack with more purpose if played further up the field but actually, he played his best football when starting from a deeper position. I think starting from a deeper position allows him to build up speed and means he doesn’t get picked up by fullbacks as easily. 

I think Thomas really needed this sort of a performance for his own confidence, as when he plays well the crowd start singing his name again, he can feel good about himself and the cloud that’s been hanging over him can lift a little bit. He’s been in a negative spiral for a while now but this performance might be enough to break out of that and we might see something closer to last season’s Sorba now.

Mark Fotheringham looks to be having a great time

I’m not sure what to make of Mark Fotheringham as head coach yet but one thing I have picked up from him is that he’s really enjoying his opportunity to be head coach of a football team. He seems to relish talking to the press about his plans for the team, he looks to be happy to be in the dugout with the other coaches before the game, he’s delighted to be giving the players a cuddle when he subs them off and he just seems very happy to be here. In a world where football managers are often the most miserable people you’ll come across (I’m looking at you Nathan Jones) it’s nice to see someone who seems to genuinely love their job.

In Fotherinham’s initial interview with the club’s media team he talked about he wasn’t here to make friends with anyone and it’s clear that he’s a tough taskmaster from the number of training sessions he’s putting the players through but he’s also clearly passionate about his work too. I don’t think he’s the type to treat his work like it’s a 9-5 kind of thing, he really cares about it and expects the same from those around him. 

Now, the fact he’s passionate and enjoys his work are only pieces of the puzzle though. He actually needs to have the ideas and the skills to actually implement it all too, and that’s what we’re going to have to see if he can do. But so far I’m quite happy with the club’s choice of head coach. Obviously, he still continues to not be David Wagner so there will be some fans that will hold that against him but I can see the potential for him to make an impact. 

Jackson and Camara show that youth can be trusted

I spoke above about how Luke Mbete looked out of his depth and not ready to play football at Championship level, that was not true of the two other youngsters in Town’s team, Ettiene Camara and Ben Jackson. Although, I suppose Ben Jackson hardly deserves to be put in the same category as despite not playing many games for Town, he was making his 50th appearance in senior football in the Luton game thanks to his many loans. 

Both Camara and Jackson were more than capable and did a decent job for the team. In fact, both did well enough to make it hard for them to be dropped for Sunday’s game against Hull so I would expect both to retain their places. Camara will be particularly needed as Kasumu is suspended. Russell badly out of form and Hogg’s fitness continues to be uncertain. 

In the past the B Team and before it the Academy had struggled to consistently produce players that could play at Championship level. We tended to specialise in players that were more comfortable at League Two or the bottom end of League One level but it seems the change in set up has led to an increase in the quality of players we’re producing and they now seem capable of coming in and doing a job in the Championship. This is far from an exact science though and is an expensive project to sustain in the long-term but I hope we stick to it as I’d much rather we develop our own young players rather than just fill our squad up with mercenaries every summer.