Predicted Huddersfield Town XI to take on Birmingham 

We’ve barely had time to fully savour the win against Cardiff on Wednesday but such is the relentlessness of the Championship that there’s another game to look forward to today. This time it’s Juninho Bacuna’s Birmingham City away and another opportunity to extend our unbeaten run. 

Huddersfield Town’s starting eleven has become increasingly hard to predict recently as Carlos has started to rotate his squad more and is tweaking his tactics to suit the opposition. As my predictions tend to be a bit wayward at the best of times, expect today’s efforts to be less accurate than even the usual low standard!

Goalkeeper: Lee Nicholls

One selection we can be fairly confident of is our keeper, who pulled off some decent saves against Cardiff on Wednesday in the first half. Paul Clements, our goalkeeping coach, shared a brilliant video the other day of training regimes involving tea trays to recreate those reaction saves that Nicholls often makes. I’d recommend watching it to see how the hard work on the training ground pays off in games.

Defence: Turton, Pearson, Colwill, Toffolo

Turton and Thomas played on the right side of the field on Wednesday and it’s hard to say what exact positions they each played. At times it looked like a right back and a right winger but at others it was more like Turton was a central defender and Sorba a wingback. Whatever system they were playing it worked well and Turton gave Thomas the licence to push forward as he made sure there was cover at the back.

While Tom Lees has been exceptional at times this season, his head injury against Cardiff makes him an injury doubt for this game and opens the door for Colwill to come back into the starting eleven. It sounds like Lees may be fit enough to be patched up and played but if there’s even a small amount of doubt then I’d go with the Chelsea loanee alongside Pearson. There’s a nice yin and yang balance about the Pearson and Colwill partnership. Colwill is the beauty, able to ping balls about and gracefully glide across the park and Pearson is the beast, big, ugly and no nonsense.

I don’t know if Toffolo or Ruffels is the prefered left back at the moment, perhaps Carlos doesn’t even know. While Ruffels has slotted in pretty well, I did point the finger at him for letting his man get past him too easily for Doherty’s goal on Wednesday night. So I’d like to see Toffolo return to the fold today, as he’ll be fresh and wanting to prove he’s number one.

Midfield: O’Brien, Russell, Eiting

Could we be slowly transitioning into the post-Hogg era at Huddersfield Town? Probably not, as he’s still very effective at this level and his leadership on the pitch has been vital at times this season. However, Jon Russell’s impressive displays recently has at least given us a glimpse of how Town might look without Hogg in the starting eleven.

If Hogg is on the bench today, it means that we could try playing O’Brien and Eiting as two attack minded central midfielders with Russell sat deeper and screening the defence. In theory, this could work very nicely, with O’Brien able to make his driving runs forward and link up with the left flank, Eiting able to roam around and show off his range of passing and Russell bossing things further back like he has done recently.

We’ve not played three central midfielders all that often this season but I think it could be a good way to control games more and dictate play, particularly when we’re playing teams towards the bottom end of the table. It also allows Carlos to play his preferred formation, 4-3-3, which he’s rarely used this season because we’ve not enough first team quality central midfielders. Eiting’s arrival and Russell’s emergence mean we’ve now got good options in this position.

Forwards: Thomas, Ward, Holmes

Sorba Thomas put in a crazy number of crosses against Cardiff and the quality of them was mostly very good. He’s not quite in the sensational form he had at the start of the season but he’s getting closer to it every game. He’s the only player in the squad to have played a part in every single game this season and it’s easy to understand why when you consider how much of a key part he plays in most games. 

I think the striker role is probably the hardest position to play in our current set up. There’s such a lot of work required off the ball that it’s hard to also be a goal threat too. When the chances aren’t coming your way it can be a slog having to run and run without any reward. Danny Ward fed off scraps against Cardiff and was visibly frustrated at times but he’s still putting in incredible shifts every game. He may be a candidate to be rested for this game with Rhodes being a capable understudy but I’d prefer to see Ward carry on. While Rhodes always carries a threat in the penalty box and Frazier Campbell gives you the energy off the ball, Ward is the one striker we have that gives the team a good balance of these two qualities.

The left side of the attacking trident could be given to Sinani, Koroma or Holmes as all three have played there fairly often this season. Sinani continues to struggle for form and will surely be dropped for today’s game. Koroma was very impressive off the bench in midweek and Holmes was a bit lacklustre but I’d still rather see Holmes play given he’s that bit more disciplined off the ball and more willing to track back and help out the defence.