Tomorrow night sees Town take their first away trip of the season and their second Friday night game when they take on Birmingham City at St Andrews. It’ll be an interesting test for Danny Schofield and his Terriers, after a poor showing against Burnley last week he will most likely fancy his chances against Birmingham but. While Birmingham might not have the talent or footballing ambition of last week’s opposition, they won’t roll over for us either and we’ll have to earn any points we get tomorrow night the hard way.
In this article I’ll look at some of the key questions we’ll find out the answers to in tomorrow night’s game….
Will Schofield keep faith with the old guard or give his new boys a run?
Against Burnley, Danny Schofield’s selection was panned for featuring none of our new signings. I personally thought it made sense to trust the experienced Championship campaigners but on the night he was let down by the experienced members of his squad. Which means he’ll have to decide whether he keeps the faith with those players or shake things up and introduces some new blood.
We don’t know what kind of head coach Schofield is yet and it would seem logical to make several changes to the starting lineup after a poor performance but he may be the kind of coach that has a vision and likes to stick to it. Or he may be a tinkerer who likes to completely rip up the system and start again if it’s not working.
I’ll do a full team prediction article tomorrow morning but my suspicion is that the likes of Rudoni and Anjorin did more than enough to justify being promoted to the starting eleven and Holmes, Koroma and Russell could all face the chop after their lackluster showings.
Can Town muster a shot on target?
Last week and the playoff final both saw Town fail to register a single shot on target. Which makes me think we should just take a punt at goal from kickoff to get that particular monkey off our back. I think it’s ridiculous that you can play a full game of football and not give the opposing goalkeeper a single meaningful save to make. So I would make shots on target an absolute priority in this game.
Hopefully we’ll be able to attack a good bit more against Birmingham than we did against Burnley and that will lead to more opportunities to shoot. But we really can’t be shy about letting shots off when getting into Birmingham’s half. Last season we were a bit too cautious in the final third, hopefully under a new regime we might throw caution to the wind when we attack and create more shooting opportunities. This will hopefully happen naturally because we’ll open up Birmingham and create good opportunities to score.
But if we’re not carving them open and getting in behind them, we have players that are capable of scoring from range. If nobody else, Danny Grant scored a beauty from outside the box in the B Team this week. I think we sometimes try too hard to create the perfect scoring opportunities when we could instead just take a chance and see if we can make something happen.
What is Danny Schofield’s philosophy?
I think we saw quite clearly what kind of football Burnley wanted to play last week and it was very nice to watch. I’m not so sure what Town are about though. To begin with we tried to press them high up the pitch but then they soon took advantage of that and we instead dropped deep and tried to soak up pressure and hit them on the break. The truth is that it was probably a poor game to really judge Town on as we were under the cosh for such long periods.
Maybe this game will give us more of a chance to see how Schofield wants to set up his team. I think he wants to play attacking football and to try and be more positive than Town were last season but still keep a solid foundation. That means a fairly flat back four with holding midfielders to give us a base but then the flair comes from the wingers, a number ten supporting the striker when we go forward. Not exactly groundbreaking but a simpler might not be such a bad thing.
It might take a few months for the system to fully emerge and it could even evolve as idealism and pragmatism combine into a system that includes the high-minded football ideas but also doesn’t lead to us getting battered every week.
Will Bacuna be out for revenge?
One interesting sideshow in this game will be Juninho Bacuna playing against Huddersfield Town after his years of service for us. He was a funny player as he was one of the most talented players we signed during our Premier League era and wasn’t a complete flop like many of our acquisitions from around that time. But his attitude was odd. He would put plenty of effort in at times but in other games wouldn’t look bothered at all and would walk around with his hands on his hips.
He was also a hard player to love because his form and his effort levels were so erratic and I suspect he probably wanted to be more liked by the fans than he was. Will that mean he’ll be looking to make a point against us tomorrow night? In a way, I hope not. I remember from his time at Town that he often put in his best performances when motivated by spite.
If he was crunched by a bad tackle in the opening stages of a game and didn’t get a foul he could spend the remaining time in a game trying to nutmeg the player that fouled him to the exclusion of everything else in the game. The outcome of the game would stop being important to him and he’d dedicate his entire game to making the player that he felt wronged him look silly by using silky skills to put the opposition player on his bottom over and over again. Often it would work too. He could be a very strange player at times.
So, if he decides he has a score to settle against us, we could be in for a Bacuna masterclass. On the other hand, if he plays like he did in around half of his games for us, he might just stroll around the pitch not looking all that interested in what’s going on. It’s hard to know what you’re going to get with him.
Are Huddersfield Town better than Birmingham City?
Last season’s Huddersfield Town would brush teams like Birmingham aside pretty easily. In fact, we did, last February with a fairly straight forward 2-0 victory. We were a top-end of the Championship team and they were a bottom-end of the Championship team, which was reflected in the game. I don’t think it’s nearly that straight forward in this upcoming game so it’ll be intriguing to see how it plays out.
I think the two squads are actually a lot more closely matched, so it will be interesting to see how the individual battles play out. This is particularly interesting as Birmingham are currently the third favourites for relegation. So if we are around about the same level as them then we know that we’re in for a potentially tough season.
Birmingham earned a hard-fought point against Luton in a goalless draw last weekend, so aren’t mugs. But this game should be an interesting barometer for where we can place our expectations for this season. We’ve already seen how we compare to one of the league’s top teams and not stood up well to that test, so testing ourselves against a less fancied team will be revealing, one way or another.
I’ll be watching via iFollow. After the Burnley fiasco, it should help Town to be playing away from home as I can imagine a lot of negativity from the home supporters which will just build up the anxiety in the players.
As you rightly say, 6 months ago Town outplayed Birmingham; it’s sad that we’ve gone backwards so quickly. I’m expecting nothing from this team.
It isn’t a two-game season, but (as you say) this will be a good chance to measure ourselves.
Danny needs to be brave with his selection. I’d love to see Grant on the bench and Tino starting.