Optimism, a penalty, partnerships, & the fan contribution – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 3-0 win over Leyton Orient

Huddersfield Town opened their season with a 3-0 against Leyton Orient on Saturday in glorious sunshine and even scored a penalty. After finishing last season so pathetically, particularly in the final home game against Leyton Orient, this game went a long way to emphasise that we’re now in a new era at Huddersfield Town. 

Lee Grant fielded eight debutants (not debutantes, as I spelled it in my last article, suggesting Grant was introducing young ladies to polite society) but against a Leyton Orient side that was also full of new blood, Town looked the more cohesive team of the two. It’s early days obviously, but there was a lot to like about this performance even if we still look to be gelling as a group. 

How the game unfolded 

The game started at a frenetic pace, with both sides hitting the woodwork (goals haven’t been made out of wood for years but this phrase persists so I’m not going to stop using it). Both sides were looking to get the ball down and play nice football, so it was a good opponent for Town to test themselves against in our first Lee Grant game. Once the game settled into a rhythm, Town looked to be the better team and the movement off the ball when we attacked was lovely to see. 

Town took the lead early on, thanks to a superb curling Herbie Kane free kick that Joe Low threw himself at, bundling the ball into the net off his shoulder. His finish was unorthodox but the goal was deserved for the tenacity he showed to give Rarmani Edmonds-Green the slip. It’s worth highlighting that this goal only happened because Town won a free kick in a promising area because they were pressing high up the pitch. Harness and Ledson both did good work to draw the foul that led to this crucial free kick. 

Sean Roughan, partly signed because of his excellent fitness record, succumbed to an injury midway through the half and Miller took over his place and Roosken came on in the left wing role. The change unsettled Town for a spell, which happened repeatedly last season too with all the frequent mid-game injuries we suffered from. Thankfully we rode out this adjustment period and came back into the game. 

Then at around thirty minutes in, Leyton Orient started to strangle the life out of Town, playing a possession based system that gave them most of the ball even if it was usually in harmless areas of the pitch. Town looked to have run themselves ragged in the early stages and played too deep during the fifteen to twenty minutes before half-time. If you wanted to look at this spell of Leyton Orient pressure with a glass half full mindset, Town showed that they can keep their shape and dig in when they don’t have much of the ball for long stretches but it’s not something we want to see a lot of. 

Lee Grant’s half time team talk must have been pretty good, as Town came out reinvigorated in the second half and were the dominant team from this point on. Ben Wiles was canny to whip the ball away quickly when he sensed a tackle coming and drew a foul just inside the penalty area. Then May dispatched the penalty with the kind of calmness that we’ve not seen for over five years at home. 

While both teams were having a go in the second half, Town were playing the better football and looked the most like scoring. It was reassuring to see Lee Grant bring on players from our bench and it actually improved us or at least didn’t lead to a drop off in quality. Joe Taylor in particular looked sharp, possibly because he wanted to prove something after losing his stating position to Alfie May. 

A good afternoon’s work was finished off with a lovely goal from Ruben Roosken, started by some skillful interplay by Charles and Sorensen on the right wing before finding Taylor who scuffed his shot wide to the unmarked Roosken to fire home.  

Why I’m getting a bit carried away 

Opening games of the season are often given too much significance because we’ve all been waiting so long for them to come along and everybody’s hopes are up. So it’s natural to talk about needing to not get over excited by this win and stress how many more games we’ve got to play, blah, blah, blah. 

On the other hand, we’ve had very little to get excited about at Huddersfield Town for such a long time that I’m going to allow myself a little bit of hope that this game could be a sign of things to come rather than just being an isolated 90 minutes. Perhaps, after plenty of false dawns, this might be the season where it comes together. 

It’s too early to start expecting promotion or to win the league but it’s nice to believe that those things could be possible. Obviously there will be tough times and challenges ahead but I feel like I saw the spark of something in this game. More than anything, I really enjoyed watching Town, which again, is something we’ve not had for quite a while. 

Town passed the ball with fluency, pressed high to win the ball back and played like they wanted the win more than the opposition. Those may be minimum standards at some clubs but they’ve been absent for too long at Town. Personally, I’m willing to forgive mistakes and defeats if we see these qualities in every game. And, if we are fighting hard and showing ambition in every game, over time that’s likely to lead to success more often than failure. 

The obvious counter point to my optimism is to look back on last season’s opener against Peterborough, where Town looked excellent but rarely hit those heights again in the rest of the season. But just because you’ve been hurt in the past doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to love again. And I think there was a lot of love about this new-look Huddersfield Town team; I’m looking forward to seeing more of them. 

Thoughts on Leyton Orient 

Richie Wellens, Leyton Orient’s manager, gave an interesting interview after the match. Rather than talk up his team, he slated his team’s performance and said it could have been many more goals against if their keeper hadn’t made so many good saves. I really like Wellens as a manager, he’s straight talking and has interesting ideas about how the game should be played at this level. So it was encouraging to hear him talk about how his players were second best in picking up loose balls and winning battles, the opposite of what happened when he came here in May. 

Wellens blamed himself for the result, as he had tried to get his team to play in the same style that served them so well last season, where they narrowly lost in the playoff final. With many of their key players leaving this summer and new players to bed in, they weren’t capable of the same sort of slick, attacking football. 

I think this was a pretty harsh assessment by their manager, as despite winning 3-0 in the end, Leyton Orient made life uncomfortable at times for Town. They hit the bar in the opening minutes of the game, forced a good save from Goodman from close range at 1-0 down and missed another presentable chance at 2-0. Any of these chances going in would have completely changed the complexion of the game. 

We’re used to seeing League One teams come to our stadium and park the bus but Leyton Orient showed a bit of ability, particularly in that dominant spell before half time. They did lack penetration during this period though and Town dropping deep and keeping their shape was enough to soak up pressure without too many scares. 

It would have been interesting to have this weekend’s Huddersfield Town take on last May’s Leyton Orient side, as the aggregate score of our two games would be 4-4. I’m not sure we’d have been nearly as dominant against last season’s Orient team but it would have been an interesting test of this new-look Town team. 

As for this season’s Leyton Orient, I think we were fortunate to meet them early on, as the issues they had in this game will be quickly fixed by Wellens and I can see them competing for a playoff place again. While they’ve lost players like Galbraith and Kelman, they’ve brought in players that I’m sure they’ll get a tune out of. For one, Connolly up front looks far too good for League One level and was unlucky not to score in this game. His off-the-field issues have limited his potential but he looked like a potent threat and I wouldn’t be surprised to see him among League One’s top scorers this season.

Penalties are back in the menu 

Alfie May’s penalty was the first one Huddersfield Town have scored at home for over five years, 1984 days to be precise. We’ve been awarded a few others in that in-between period but multiple players have missed to sustain that unlikely run. While goals scored from penalties can often lack the excitement of a goal that comes in open play, this one was different and the sense of release when May hit the back of the net was immense. 

It would be easy to chalk up this penalty drought to horrendous luck and terrible officials, I think the principle problem has been of our own making. Town haven’t played enough football in the opposition penalty box or had skillfully enough players to force defenders into mistakes. So the meagre number of penalties we’ve been awarded in recent years is because we’ve just not played well enough to earn them. 

Now we have this new start at Huddersfield Town, I’m hopeful that Saturday’s penalty will be the first of many this season. If Town are consistently getting the ball into the opposition final third and we’ve been clever enough with our attacking play, penalties should become a natural byproduct of our improved play. Obviously it’s early days, but if the penalties keep coming then it will be another sign that we’ve turned our fortunes around. 

The wonky formation seems to work

I know some people are bored to tears with formation and tactical talk, so skip this section if that describes you. This game saw Town play a sort of 4-2-3-1 system, which was most clear to see when we were defending. But in possession, the right-sided fullback pushed up, the left-sided fullback dropped back to become a third central defender and the right winger tucked in to become more of a second number ten. So in possession it looks more like a 3-4-2-1, with the left winger providing width on one side and the right back on the other. 

This sort of hybrid shape isn’t uncommon, we saw Michael Duff tinker with similar systems last season. However, this version seems a lot more regimented and the players all look to know more clearly where they should be at any given time. Even though this was their first competitive game of the season, we looked well drilled and had the creativity I was worried we lacked. 

Typically I’m not a fan of these hybrid systems as previous attempts left gaping holes for opponents to exploit when players are making the transition from attack to defense but we seemed to plug those gaps well on Saturday. The emphasis was on pressing high for most of the game, which did lead to a few hairy moments when Leyton Orient countered but everyone stuck to their task and it just about worked. 

I expect we’ll stick with this system for a while because it’s the shape we’ve played in for the bulk of preseason. However, as the season progresses, I hope to see Lee Grant experiment with different formations and systems, so we’ve got a plan B, C or D for the various situations that games can throw at you. 

Little partnerships all over the pitch

I talked about the individual player performances in my player ratings article, so I’ll not repeat them here. However, I will say that there were signs of several useful partnerships developing on the pitch, which is often a sign of a team coming together nicely. 

Low and Watmough were a good team at the back, despite being up against a very skilled centre forward. Roosken and Miller combined well on the left, with Miller overlapping nicely at times. Wiles and May both used clever movement to create space for the other. Gooch and Harness dovetailed to good effect, with Harness drifting inside to free up the channels for Gooch to run into. Kane and Ledson’s attributes compliment each other nicely. And when Taylor came on, there was a brief spell where he and May shared the pitch, with May dropping back and playing a more selfless, provider role and Taylor stretching the defence with his pace. 

It’s easy to point out this sort of thing when we’ve played well and won 3-0, so the real test will be for these relationships to develop over time. Hopefully we can avoid too many injuries and keep everyone in good form long enough to create a relatively settled starting eleven with the rest of the squad coming in to supplement them where needed. 

The fans are doing their bit

I’m going to save my final remarks to celebrate Town’s fans. After some fairly ugly scenes from the stands, in terms of booing players and dishing out personal abuse last season, Saturday was a completely different story. 

There were individual fans going above and beyond, like the Cowshed Loyal who put hundreds of hours into their banners or the young lad who did a sponsored walk from Ireland to Huddersfield in the build up to the game. On top of that, Town fans collectively have shown a good amount of faith by renewing their season cards in decent numbers at a vastly inflated price despite there being no evidence at the time of renewing that things will improve. After the initial backlash to price rises, I expected a large tail off this season but the announced attendance and the eyeball test all suggest that most Town fans have renewed despite the extra cost.

I also thought the atmosphere in the crowd was really good on Saturday. Lee Grant was only minutes into his managerial career and the Cowshed were singing about being Lee Grant’s Barmy Army. At a club that changes managers more often than many fans wash their Town shirts, this was a remarkable show of goodwill to an unproven manager. 

I think the decent season ticket sales and positive vibes in the ground shows that Town fans have been desperate to have a team to get behind. There’s a push and pull factor, where the players need a boost from the stands but the fans need the players to give them something to cheer for. Hopefully, this season we will have plenty of reasons to cheer this team on. Because as a fan, I really, really want to enjoy going to watch games again. On Saturday’s evidence it at least feels like a possibility for this coming season.