“Not the prettiest” – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s ugly win against Wigan

Huddersfield Town battled a tough Wigan team and rotten weather conditions to win 2-1 on Saturday afternoon. The game wasn’t a classic but Huddersfield Town showed some resilience and just enough quality to win the kind of game that typically ends up with dropped points. 

The win sends Town to the top of the league table and completes a sequence of Saturday-Tuesday-Saturday games with three consecutive wins. I don’t have the stats to hand but it must be a very long time since we’ve emerged from a hectic week with maximum points. 

Here are a few of my thoughts on the game…

Thanks very much, let’s have coffee

“To put it in gentleman’s terms, if you’ve been out for a night and you’re looking for a young lady and you pull one, you’ve done what you set out to do. We didn’t look our best today but we’ve pulled. Some weeks the lady is good looking and some weeks they’re not. Our performance today would have been not the best looking bird but at least we got her in the taxi. She may not have been the best looking lady we ended up taking home but it was still very pleasant and very nice, so thanks very much and let’s have coffee.”

The above quote doesn’t come from Martin Drury after this Wigan game, it’s from Ian Holloway in 2003 after his QPR team had struggled to a win against Chesterfield but the sentiment still holds for this game. This is a Huddersfield Town fan blog, not a feminism blog, so I’ll avoid the gender politics of the above statement but will highlight how Huddersfield Town managed to get the job done on Saturday, even if it was not the prettiest to watch at times.

Calling it an ugly win may be an exaggeration, as there were isolated moments where we looked pretty good and overall I felt satisfied with the game but winning ugly is a good habit to have. It’s pretty dull to watch these sorts of games every week but when the opposition makes it hard, you sometimes have to get in the mud with them and scrap it out. Thankfully, despite a late scare, Town did their job well and were worthy winners of the game. 

Each goal tells a story

If you wanted to think deeply about the game, you could consider how each of the goals in this game highlight something about this season’s Huddersfield Town. 

For starters, Ilias Bronkhorst’s goal was almost foretold by Martin Drury in his pre-match press conference. When he was asked about Bronkhorst he talked about how he could be a threat in the box and they want him to get forward. Mystic Martin’s prediction came true for Town’s opening goal, with Bronkhorst heading home a lovely Cameron Humphreys cross from close range. The header was simple but the goal was deserved because Bronkhorst was willing to gamble by making a run to the back post when he saw Humphreys advancing down the other flank into a crossing position. These must be the most satisfying goals for managers, as Bronkhorst was acting upon the instructions he’d received to be aggressive in the box and it paid dividends. We’re still early on in Martin Drury’s time as Huddersfield Town manager but the signs so far suggest he does seem to know what he’s doing and has a plan to get the best out of his players. This goal sums that up. 

Our second goal involved an excellent through ball from Marcus Harness to play in Sanches Fernandes but the rest was down to DSF. As much as I’ve praised Drury for his management that helped with the first goal, the tactics underpinning our second were as simple as “give the ball to Fernandes” and it paid off. Having a player like Fernandes gives us such an advantage, particularly in a game where it’s hard to get much space for creativity. His technical ability with the ball at his feet is superb and even though he nearly always had at least two players on him, he still managed to show some lovely bits of skill throughout the game. But for this goal it was more pace and determination that got him in behind Wigan’s defence and the keeper’s slip before the shot might have helped but he deserved a goal for yet another fine display. 

So while we can credit the new management and new approach to our success this season, a large part of it is also having signed a brilliant player that looks far too good for this level of football. I might be overegging it but I can’t remember enjoying watching a Huddersfield Town player this much since Aaron Mooy’s time. Which is interesting when you consider Sorba Thomas has been a Town player in that time period and is now playing in the Premier League.

Wigan’s goal turned out to only be a consolation rather than a turning point in the match but it was a reminder that there’s still work to do with this Huddersfield Town team. As much as Saydee’s goal was a great strike, there were some real issues with how we conceded this goal. Firstly, the ball was only in Wigan’s possession because Young flapped at a cross that most other keepers would have caught without issue, then when Wigan attacked we didn’t get in their faces enough and allowed them enough space to pick out passes and ultimately curl it past Young. 

Had Young saved the shot, I’d be saying it was a great save but having seen the replays a few times now, the shot was at a savable height. Being generous, it looked like Young saw it a bit late and wasn’t quick enough to get over to cover his far post. My bigger concern is how Young still looks very uncomfortable dealing with crosses and there were a couple of times when he panicked when the ball was floated to his back post. 

Table Topping Terriers

Nobody wins the league in October and there’s a lot of football to be played between now and the end of the season but I have to confess that I’m getting a bit giddy about this Town team’s prospects. While we’re clearly not the finished article, we’ve proven over these first 11 games that we’re capable of getting good results. If we can maintain this form over the next 35 games then it’s likely we’ll be right up there at the business end of the season. 

Can Town maintain this form or even get better? Yes, I think they can but there’s also a lot that can go wrong in the meantime. The biggest risk is that we suffer even more injuries. So far our worst hit areas of the pitch have just happened to be in areas where we’ve got the strongest depth. We’ve got three central defenders and three central midfielders currently out injured but all of them have been replaced by competent League One standard players. If we had a similar injury crisis with wingers or strikers then we’d be forced to promote kids out of the academy or to play first teamers out of position to fill the holes. 

But if we can keep our key players fit and we stick to the style of play that Martin Drury has brought in then I think there’s potential for us to have a great season. In the summer, the targets being set were about bringing back the good feeling at games and playing the right way rather than a points total or league position. Now we’re properly into the season, I suspect the ambition may be being upgraded a little. 

I’ve been supporting Town since the mid nineties and have yet to see us win an automatic promotion. It would be special to see us go up the easier way, without needing the playoffs. We’ve seen good starts fizzle out in previous seasons but I’m starting to get the feeling that this season could be different. (As always, it’s the hope that kills you.)

Wigan are better than bottom of the league

If I’d have been asked to guess where Wigan were in the league based on their performance in this game, I’d have presumed they were somewhere around midtable, neither pushing for promotion or threatened by relegation. They were a bit ponderous in possession for long spells and their finishing was poor (apart from their goal, obviously) but they were well drilled and could play some nice stuff in spells too. 

Maybe the standard of the bottom end of League One has improved and Wigan are deservedly propping up the table but I think they’re in a false position. Time will tell but based on this game, I’d expect them to pick up plenty of points against the leagues weaker teams, and they’ve already beaten Reading and drawn with Sheffield Wednesday, so they’re clearly not mugs.

AOB

Taylor’s slow trudge off the pitch – I’ve praised Saydee’s finish and criticised Young’s goalkeeping for Wigan’s goal but I didn’t mention another factor, which was we were defending with ten men at the point of the goal because Joe Taylor took too long to get off the pitch when he was subbed. It may have seemed like a harsh punishment but I actually think this is a good rule and has reduced the “gamesmanship” that used to dominate the later stages of most games when one team wanted to run down the clock to secure the outcome they want. I don’t think Taylor was actually deliberately running the clock down, I think he was just fed up with the way that the game had gone. For the second time in a week, he was right up with play when we scored and didn’t initially celebrate a goal. I’m guessing he was too annoyed that he’d not had the ball squared to him to fully enjoy the moment which doesn’t reflect all that well on him. 

Perfect bugling – This was Town’s last home game in the league before Remembrance Sunday, so there was a minute’s silence before the game. I didn’t catch the name of the man playing the Last Post during the silence but I wanted to note down how perfectly he played and how moving a tribute it was. And the crowd played their part too by observing the silence immaculately.

Getting soaked – One element that wasn’t perfect about this game was the weather. I absolutely love our stadium and think it’s remarkable how the roof is supported by the banana trusses and doesn’t need the pillars to hold up the roof that create so many obstructed views in a stadium. The down side is that the roof doesn’t reach out as far as it could do and when the wind is blowing, rain comes in and soaks around the first fifteen rows of the Riverside stand, meaning I was pretty much soaked to the skin by the end of the match. This wasn’t the wettest I’ve been at a Town match though, that was the game where we beat Manchester United in our first season in the Premier League under David Wagner. So at least getting drenched brought back that happy memory. Just like in that game, the water doesn’t feel quite as wet when you pick up three points.