Huddersfield Town started the season with a double-header against Wimbledon and the team that stole their old club’s place in the league, MK Dons. The following two fixtures of our season see Town in a double-header against places better known for their universities than their football teams, with last Saturday’s trip to Cambridge and tonight’s visit of Oxford.
This fact isn’t related to football, but I was surprised to see that Huddersfield University has almost as many students (20,000ish) as Cambridge (25,000ish) and Oxford(27,000). So if you judge a university’s quality purely on the number of students studying there, we’re not actually that far behind these more established university towns. Apologies for the weird digression, here’s the predicted lineup…
Goalkeeper: Young
Still looks pretty decent, which is good because I have no confidence in either of our backup options. Interestingly, Tzanev is currently the sub keeper while Alnwick is presumably third choice. The early games of the season saw Alnwick miss football for the arrival of a new child, which is completely the right thing to do. I wonder if that’s over now and he’s just not deemed as good as Tzanev. It doesn’t really matter though, as long as Young stays fit and in form we shouldn’t have to worry too much about the other members of the goalkeeper’s union.
Defenders: Balker, Low, Wallace
Ibane Bowat has looked pretty good in the opening games of the season but last Saturday was his worst performance yet. Maybe I was harsh to judge him for his slip in the build up to Cambridge’s goal, given he did get a push from behind, but I thought his all-round game looked a bit sloppy at times. He seemed to dawdle on the ball at times and at others his clearances were straight to opposition players. For that reason and to rotate the team a little bit, I’d sit him out of this game in favour of Joe Low.
I assume that Martin Drury has many of Carlos Corberan’s preferences when it comes to approaching building a team, and Carlos always wanted left footed players on the left side of central defence. So if Joe Low comes in, I’d expect him to become the central defender of the three, so the left-footed Murray Wallace can be on the left. This isn’t ideal though, as Wallace has the pace and flexibility of a badly built Ikea wardrobe, so isn’t ideal in this position.
I feel like we’ve lacked a bit of physical presence in the box in the last few games and Joe Low coming back into the lineup would assist us with that, as well as providing a threat for attacking set pieces. The cost comes in his limited ability on the ball but if Archie Collins starts then we’ll hopefully see more of the midfield coming to collect the ball and spray passes rather than relying on the defenders to ping perfect diagonals from deep.
Midfield: Bronkhorst, Ledson, Collins, Sway
There’s been a slight diminishing return from Bronkhorst over the three league games we’ve seen. He was brilliant against Wimbledon, iffy at times against MK Dons and struggled a bit against Cambridge. A lot of their play came down Bronkhorst’s side, possibly exacerbated by Fernandes not being the best at tracking back and protecting his fullback. I’m still a fan of his though and want to see him given a good run to get acclimatised to English football.
Archie Collins played just over half an hour against Cambridge and seemed perfectly fine with that workload, so I’m hoping he’s ready to start this game, even if that means he has to come off early in the second half. Collins has been signed to fix our midfield, so we need to bring him in as soon as possible. I’d also like to see him and Ledson given a number of games together to build up a partnership in the middle.
Judging from the reports about Collins by Peterborough fans when we signed him, I’d expect him to be a deep-lying playmaker. To fit alongside that, Ledson needs to be a box-to-box sort of role, where he puts tackles in when needed but also bursts forward to give us options in attack. I think he’s at his best when he has more licence to get forward, so Collins and Ledson should compliment each other.
I’ve enjoyed watching Harness as a central midfielder but I think we’ve been a bit too lightweight at times in that area of the pitch. It’s not his fault, he’s not a specialist in that position and is more suited to playing further forward.
Attack: Fernandes, Radulovic, Taylor
I think there might be a bit of pressure on Drury to bench Fernandes for this game, given we’re up against one of the stronger teams in the division and DSF hasn’t been great with his defensive duties when he’s had to track back. I’d be reluctant to drop him though as he’s a player that can produce a moment of magic from nowhere and ties up multiple defenders with his direct dribbling. I think he offers enough going forward to more than offset his limitations when he’s defending.
If I was picking tonight’s team, I’d swap Fletcher out in favour of Bojan Radulovic. I think Fletcher has been excellent at times in these first three games but last weekend was his weakest showing yet. If we didn’t have other options, I’d have no concerns about Fletecher keeping his place but I’d like to see more of Bojan Radulovic after some decent contributions from the bench, particularly how well he set up Taylor for both the first goal and the penalty incident on Saturday.
The only reason Taylor wouldn’t be playing in this game would be if there was some last minute transfer interest in him, so it will be a relief to see his name on the teamsheet when they’re officially released. If it’s true that we paid £3m for him when he signed, I can’t see us letting go unless we could make a decent profit. Even then, if we’re not struggling for money and the player is happy to stay, I think we’d be better off slapping a “not for sale” sign on him and shooing away potential suitors. He was the main reason we came away with a win rather than a defeat at the weekend, so I think we’d be a bit mad to let him go unless the money on offer was too good to turn down.