Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 1-0 win against Wigan

It’s hard to know how to approach a write-up of last night’s game against Wigan, where Huddersfield Town won 1-0. The victory saw Town extend their unbeaten run in the league to eight games and was also our seventh consecutive win at home, so whichever way you slice it, this result is part of a wider upturn in Huddersfield Town’s fortunes. However, the game also saw some of the club’s persistent problems from this season continue. Our strikers were mostly hard-working but poor, the football we play is stodgy and dull for long periods, and it takes four times as many chances than other teams to actually get the ball in the net. 

Winning games when you’re not at your best is what successful teams do. Though those teams tend to play well with the rare average performance, Town seem to have recently made an art of turning drab games into winning ones. That’s certainly better than not winning them but I still feel that this team could be doing better even if they’re doing enough to get the win.

Feeling flat after victories

There’s a part of me that can’t believe I’m not happier with the amount of winning football happening for Huddersfield Town this season. This game was our tenth league victory of the season, which means we’ve now won more games in League One than we did in the whole of last season’s relegation campaign in the Championship and it’s only the start of December. The difficulty is that I’ve inflated my expectations now we’re in a league below and scrappy one-nil wins against teams in the bottom half don’t feel all that good. It’s not just me either, the whole stadium feels a bit flat during these kinds of laboured but professional victories. 

The form table doesn’t lie though, and Town are among the best teams in League One in recent weeks due to some workmanlike and solid performances. Perhaps this little run is putting in foundations that we can sprinkle a bit of fairy dust on top of to progress into genuinely impressive football. Or maybe we’ll keep grinding out results. You get three points for winning regardless of how scintillating the football is, so I suppose I should just shut up and enjoy that winning feeling.

It’s also worth putting this season in the wider context of around 12 years of usually battling relegation with two seasons providing unexpected success in the middle of over a decade of struggle. So turning a failing team into a winning one, regardless of how it’s done, is an achievement. The mindset of being a scrappy underdog has now gone and thanks to eventually succumbing to the drop from the Championship after years of resisting it, we’re now in the position of being a relatively big fish in a small pond. Michael Duff seems to have started the process of bringing a winning mentality back to Huddersfield, even if it takes quite a lot of humdrum performances to get there.

Positives from the win against Wigan

I might have overdone the apathy about this result because there was plenty to like about Town’s performance against Wigan. Against a team that showed flashes of being quite decent, we still obviously deserved the victory and could have won more comfortably given the high number of chances we carved out. 

There are several individual players that deserve credit too. David Kasumu has reached a level of consistency now where he is playing well in every game and it’s just expected. He’s enjoying his best spell in a Huddersfield Town shirt and the growing confidence that’s given him means he’s doing things we’ve never seen from him before. Such as making the run and pass for Oli Turton to score alongside other attacking contributions that aren’t typically part of his game. 

Turton was also in fine fettle down the right side, up against three different wingers at various points in the evening and winning the majority of his battles. The fact he also scored his first Huddersfield Town goal was the icing on an already delicious cake. With the players at the top end of the pitch continuing to draw blanks, it’s good that someone else stepped up to bag a goal. 

Michal Helik also looked very solid at the back, as did Tom Lees, which meant that no matter how good Wigan were out wide, they frequently broke down when moving the ball back to the middle. It almost looks too easy for Helik to defend against League One strikers as he’s played the bulk of his career against more talented forwards. 

Danny Ward’s inclusion in the starting lineup didn’t fill me with hope before the game but his performance was actually good until he started to tire. This was the purposeful and busy Danny Ward that we’ve seen occasionally rather than the struggling one that has turned out so much in recent seasons. On a few occasions, an extra half-yard of pace would have seen him get in on goal but sadly he’s not as spritely as he was back in his first spell. 

And aside from the individual performances, the whole team did a good job of relentlessly squeezing Wigan when they tried to play out from the back. The cat-and-mouse game of them passing among their defenders and our forwards closing them down was hardly box office entertainment but we managed to win that battle with our energetic pressing, cutting off their passing lanes and repeatedly forcing them to boot it long or gift us possession. Often the loose balls didn’t fall kindly for Town when we broke up play or a poor pass saw us give them the ball back but the work off the ball from Town continues to be great, living up to Duff’s promise of creating a team that is fit, strong and organised. Wigan’s players looked exhausted at the final whistle, as do most teams we play against, which shows how hard they had to work to keep up with us.

The usual grumbles

I’m sick of writing the same stuff after every game and you’re most likely fed up of reading it too, so I’ll be quick here:

• We had seventeen shots on goal, only managed to get five on target, of which (obviously) only one went in. I watched the shooting practice during the warm-up before the game and even with the pressure off, we were still rubbish in front of goal. I counted seven attempts from close range before we eventually got one in, the rest were either straight at the keeper or not on target. 
• Even though I’ve highlighted Danny Ward’s promising performance in the positives, the strikers still failed to score or even get that close. Josh Koroma had plenty of chances but his right-foot curler couldn’t find the mark. Marshall and Ward were grafting up front but neither had the cutting edge to capitalise when they did win the ball in good areas.  And I’ll come to Freddie Ladapo later, but he was not the answer either.
• Some of the fundamentals, like passing the ball five yards, are still not quite right. Numerous times we lost possession because of hard-to-fathom mistakes when there was little pressure. This basic skill issue has been persistent at Town for years now, despite the comings and goings of players meaning it’s an almost completely different squad making the same simple mistakes far too regularly.
• Even though Town kept a clean sheet, I still thought we looked a bit too vulnerable in wide areas. Despite Duff changing the shape and the personnel repeatedly throughout the game, Wigan did get quite a bit of joy down the flanks, particularly down our left, where I thought Lonwijk struggled to make an impact. He seemed too happy to back off and allow crossing opportunities, though that might have been because he didn’t feel supported enough by Josh Koroma, who will never make a wingback.

The fact we’re winning games despite these continued frailties is unquestionably a good thing. I just hope that we can find a way to improve on these weaknesses and graduate into becoming a genuinely great team at this level. The potential is there but there’s still work to do to fulfil these promising signs.

Oh Freddie Ladapo

“Oh” is probably the best way to sum up Ladapo’s game, where he came on and looked a bit surprised to find himself engaged in a game of football. The omens weren’t good when his first action was to stand about twenty yards offside for the freekick Town had, before immediately running back to where he should have been in the first place. I think he thought we had a corner despite the opposition goalie being the only one in their box. Or maybe he just forgot offside was a thing. 

The only thing I remember Freddie Ladapo doing right was winning a decent header and flicking it on to a Town player. Unfortunately for him, he’d been so poor up to that point that this small glimmer of ability was met with ironic jeers from the home fans. Getting booed and berated from the stands is bad enough but when you are a figure of fun and being mercilessly mocked, it’s hard to come back from that. 

It has to be said though, that Ladapo has had a good career in football and is no doubt likely to earn thousands of pounds a week throughout his two-year contract at Huddersfield Town. So who is the one that should really be laughing? 

Despite the thousands he’s earning, I still felt for Ladapo during his brief appearance from the bench. Not as a footballer but as a man. It must be hard to play so badly that people are laughing and jeering you. Maybe those jeers will motivate him to find the kind of form that’s seen him consistently perform to a decent standard at this level for previous clubs. Maybe.

However, if I’m honest, I can’t see him turning it around from here. He’s currently in the same group of players as Adama Diakhaby, Ryan Schofield, Ramadan Sohbi and Luke Mbete as players who were so bad that they became funny (feel free to add to this list in the comments, I think there are dozens I’ve left out). Given Ladapo’s vast experience, he shouldn’t be spoken about in the same breath as the failures I mentioned above but based on what he’s shown in a Town shirt so far he’s justified his current status as a laughing stock. He’s our player until the end of the 25/26 campaign though, so hopefully he’ll turn it around. Not running away from the ball when it’s coming towards you would be a good start on that journey.

A busy period ahead

This game was the first of seven games for Town in December, with another seven in January too. Going into this period near the top of the form table bodes well and there’s potential for Town to climb the table further if they can keep their unbeaten streak going. 

Despite complaining about Town more than I would expect during this unbeaten run, I still feel like we’ve got enough to win most games at this level. There’s also the prospect of several quality players coming back from injury too. While losing Healey and Miller to long-term injuries recently has been a blow, Balker, Nicholls, Hodge, Sorensen and Evans could all be back in contention in the next few weeks. Only Evans of that list is currently not training but his bruised toe sounds like a minor but persistent problem rather than anything more worrying. 

It’s also possible that January could see us dip into the transfer market to get the striker we so obviously need. Though the number of times we’ve gone into a transfer window knowing we need a striker but haven’t been able to recruit a good one is pretty much every transfer window in recent memory. 

In short, I think Town are doing pretty well at the moment and have the potential to do even better as we move into the second half of the season. While we’re not currently in the automatic promotion places that the club have stated they want to be in at the end of the season, a good month or two could see us get to that point. As ever, it’s the hope that kills you.