Huddersfield Town take on Cambridge United on Saturday afternoon and will hope that they can continue their unbeaten start in League One. We’re still finding out what kind of team Martin Drury’s Huddersfield Town are going to be this season but the early indicators are promising with a few nagging doubts.
The attacking side of Town’s game has been particularly impressive, with Fletcher being the exact kind of striker we’ve been missing for years, Fernandes looking like an exciting player with genuine goal threat and Joe Taylor suddenly looks like the player we hoped he would be when we first signed him. In defence of Taylor, Drury is the first manager to play to Taylor’s strengths, so it’s not exactly a surprise that he’s looking more dangerous when the service he’s receiving helps him show his speed and finishing skill.
The concerns are more about Town’s ability to manage games and see out results. Under Drury, we’ve had a concerning tendency to lose leads, particularly late in games. Archie Collins has been signed as the player to do the job of controlling the flow of games and dictate the pace but it seems like he’s still getting up to match fitness after spending the summer as a free agent and missing out on the friendly games that are needed to get up to full match sharpness.
Here’s how I think we’ll lineup this afternon…
Goalkeeper: Young
Young hasn’t had a great deal of work to do in our opening games of the season but he’s seemed like a safe pair of hands (literally) so far. He’s saved everything he should have and none of the goals we’ve let in have been his fault. I think that it takes longer to judge goalkeepers than it does outfield players, as they’re less involved in games but the signs look positive. Even though he’s a young keeper at the start of his career, he has a presence and confidence on the pitch which settles my nerves about him. Last season’s loanee keeper, Owen Goodman, wanted to get involved in games a bit too much and often blundered as a result. I’ve a much better feeling about Matty Young, even if this opinion is based on limited evidence.
Defence: Balker, Wallace, Bowat
In my write up after last week’s draw with MK Dons, I questioned our defences ability to cope with high balls into the box. Murray Wallace will happily head away balls for fun all day but Bowat and Balker look less happy when put under this kind of pressure. Despite being physically the right size to be aerially dominant, they both look uncomfortable competing in the air and are much stronger when they have the ball at their feet.
Joe Low has been waiting patiently on the side lines so far this season and there could be a case for swapping him in for Bowat to give us a bit more muscle in the back line. I think both he and Wallace are too limited in their ability on the ball to play in the same back three, as we’ve seen plenty of times what happens when you tell limited defenders to try and play out from the back like they’re Paulo Maldini.
After condemning Ibane Bowat’s ability in the air in the above paragraph, I will say that I’ve been pretty impressed with him otherwise. It seemed like he was signed as backup but he looks good enough to start most weeks. He’s good under pressure when bringing the ball out and has an eye for a pass too. He’s also shown good flexibility in swapping between a leftback and the left side of a back three, which makes it possible to change shape dynamically in-game without needing to change the players on the pitch.
Midfield: Bronkhorst, Ledson, Harness, Sway
Ilias Bronkhorst is another new signing that looks like a good addition to the squad. He won’t want to watch MK Dons’ goal from last weekend back too many times though, as their move only started because he put a weak cross into the box and then he compounded that error by not getting nearly tight enough on their man for the goal. Aside from that, he has looked like a clear step up from Gooch and Sorensen on the right side of the pitch, so I expect him to keep his place.
Ledson and Harness is an interesting midfield combo. For Ledson, having a non-specialist alongside him forced into a more conservative role and he’s sat a bit deeper. But by taking on more grunt work, it frees up Harness to do more creative stuff. Harness isn’t a typical central midfielder, but I like the way he plays in that area of the pitch, using his ability on the ball to make space for himself and I like his eye for a forward pass. It seems that David Kasumu is deemed not good enough, Archie Collins not match fit enough and Ethan Brierly not defensively disciplined enough for any of the more obvious choices to start in this role, so I think Harness will keep his spot.
The left wingback is a bit of a problem position at the moment, with Roughan not fit (and not really suited to the more advanced wingback role), Gooch out of form and Mumba suspended. Jay Sway stepped in against MK Dons and did a decent job, I hope he is picked again in this position. He’s not the finished article but he does seem to have something about him and with a run in the team, I can see him getting better with every game.
Attack: Fernandes, Fletcher, Taylor
After a dream home debut against Wimbledon, MK Dons knew what to expect and had a special plan for Fernandes last weekend. The extra attention they gave him probably helped to make space for Taylor and Fletcher but it did make it harder for Fernandes to have as much of an impact. I see this as a win-win situation, as if teams double up on him it means someone, somewhere else isn’t being marked and if we can spread the ball about he’s benefiting the team by tying up a couple of defenders; if he doesn’t get doubled up on then he can be our danger man.
Ashley Fletcher was a lick of paint away from his first Huddersfield Town goal when his shot hit the bar last weekend, hopefully he’ll open his account in this game. He looks in decent form and I’ve been really impressed with his movement, surprising bursts of pace and nice touch. For his sake, I hope he scores soon to avoid there being any questions about his goalscoring threat.
It was interesting to hear Martin Drury talk about his relationship with Joe Taylor in his recent press comments. He said that Taylor has basically been a model professional since coming back for preseason and the two have a good working relationship. This is great news for our prospects of keeping Taylor past transfer deadline day, as unfortunately, players have a lot of influence over such things these days. It would be cruel for us to lose Joe Taylor after we’ve finally managed to fit him into a system that suits him.
Wait a minute! So you’re saying…
… I think it will be an unchanged team from last weekend? Yes. To lift the lid on how I write these articles, I started typing without giving much thought to how my selection would compare to the team Drury picked last weekend and it only occurred to me once I’d picked my team and wrote most of the article.
I suppose I could have swapped a few players around just to shake things up a bit but my impression of Drury so far is that he wants to keep a settled starting XI as much as possible. That’s not always possible over the course of a long season but while we’re playing pretty well and relationships are building across the field, I think there’s some value in having a consistent and settled starting team most weeks.
