Huddersfield Town take on Swansea this afternoon, after making the long journey from West Yorkshire to south Wales. It’s likely to be another tricky afternoon for the Terriers, as Swansea are a decent team who like to play possession football. So expect another game where Town see very little of the ball and have to play on the counter. That might actually suit Neil Warnock’s Terriers though, as our recent turn around in fortunes has mostly been built around dogged performances where we let the other team keep the ball and hit them on the counter and with set pieces rather than trying to do anything too fancy ourselves.
Town go into the game outside of the relegation zone with just five games to go and this game represents a chance to put some extra space between us and the drop zone. Getting a win against Swansea won’t be easy but with Town unbeaten in their last five games, there’s no reason Town shouldn’t think they can get something from this game.
Predicted Huddersfield Town lineup to take on Swansea
Neil Warnock has now got a fairly settled core group of players that he’s been working with for recent games and it’s been getting him results. For that reason, I’d be stunned if there are wholesale changes. I think there will be two changes at most, one tactical and potentially due illness.
Joseph Hungbo came into the team on Easter Monday in favour of Rarmani Edmonds-Green, which was an attacking switch but I think that made us a bit too open and strangely less of an attacking force because having more attackers meant we couldn’t get a grip on the game to launch attacks. So bringing back Edmonds-Green in favour of Hungbo seems like a sensible move for an away game where we expect to see very little of the ball. He’ll be able to play in defensive midfield as a screen to the central defence, at right back or in the middle of defence. Whichever role he plays, he’s done a decent job since Warnock has come in and he’s one of several players to have really benefitted from having an experienced man manager come in, as he was going nowhere this season until Warnock arrived.
The other change to the lineup is a bit of a mystery but Warnock mentioned that there was one player in the team that had succumbed to an illness this week and would face a late fitness test. He wouldn’t say who it was but I suspect that it will be one of the key players, otherwise it wouldn’t be much of an issue. So I’d guess one of Ward, Rudoni, Hogg, Helik, Lees or Vaclik. Any of those players would be hard to replace with similar quality if they were unavailable due to illness, so hopefully whoever it is recovers enough to start the game.
Predicted lineup to start the game against Swansea: Vaclik, Pearson, Lees, Helik, Ruffles, Edmonds-Green, Hogg, Kasumu, Rudoni, Koroma, Ward,
Swansea will try to pass us to death
Our opponents today head into the game in fairly decent form. They’re undefeated in their last four games, having beaten Wigan 2-0 in their last game, drawing 0-0 with Coventry before that and beating Cardiff and Bristol in the two games before that.
The thing that I remember most from our recent games against Swansea is how unusual they are for a Championship team because they love keeping hold of the ball. It’s like an obsession of theirs. This can look really nice at times and lead to some lovely looking football but at other times it can be pretty tedious and just passing for its own sake. This isn’t something Swansea do just when they play Town, they’ve averaged 60.2% possession in all of their Championship games this season, which is freakishly high, second only to Burnley who have 60.7%.
When you pair Swansea’s love of possession with Town’s recent completely disinterest in it – we set an all time Championship record for least possession in a game against Blackburn on Monday – then this game could end up like a training exercise. Expect to spend a lot of time waiting for Town to get the ball off the team in white.
How can Town win this game?
I might have painted a bleak picture for Town in the above section, but it’s worth thinking back to the period when Town experimented with possession football under Mark Robins. How many games did we register huge possession stats and still fail to win while playing turgid football? Town don’t need to worry about Swansea having the ball as long as we make sure we have a threat on the counter, which is something Mark Fotheringham struggled when he went negative with Town but Neil Warnock has introduced since he came in.
When we sit deep, we still burst forward with pace when we win the ball back and we’re not afraid to commit players forward if there’s an opportunity to get into the opposition half. In fairness, the improvement in Josh Koroma has massively helped Town as a counter attacking force, as well as Danny Ward staying fit and healthy as he does a lot of the ugly stuff that helps the team play this system.
The thing that will really make or break Town in this game is how well we play the ball out when we try to release our forward players. Against Blackburn we were very mixed in this area, when we were at our best, we managed to find our forward players with accurate long balls and released them up the field when we won the ball back. But for long periods of that game we were very wasteful with our forward balls and just blasted the ball straight back to our opponents and invited pressure back onto ourselves.
Swansea player to watch: Joel Piroe
Piroe scored both of Swansea’s goals on Monday’s win against Wigan and has score 17 goals in all competitions so far this season. He’s currently fifth in the Championship top-scorer charts and will be hoping to add to his tally against Town as he chases last season’s haul of 24 goals.
There’s a rumoured £20m price tag on the striker this summer, and even that might not be enough to ward of Premier League suitors, so this could be his last season in the Championship. Tom Lees and Michal Helik will have the task of trying to keep him under wraps later on this afternoon.
Score prediction: Swansea 1 – 2 Huddersfield Town
I don’t think we’ll manage a clean sheet in this game but I also have a sneaking suspicion that we might snatch three points anyway. We’ve become one of those nasty Neil Warnock teams that are horrible to play against but you enjoy watching when it’s your team. We’ll make life uncomfortable for Swansea and hopefully snatch a couple of goals on the counter, which means a single goal going in won’t be too much to worry about.
If I was going to bet on the goalscorers, I’d be backing Pearson to keep up his red-hot goalscoring form and Josh Koroma to get one of those trademark, cut in on his right foot type of goals he loves to score.
What do you think the score will be? Put your prediction in the comments?
It is interesting that you think Pearson (who as a defender is unlikely to keep scoring game after game) is more likely to score than Danny Ward – I agree Danny does the ugly stuff, but the primary role of strikers is to score goals and he has sadly failed on a grand scale this season in that regard.
Pearson has scored four in his last three games, so it’s hardly controversial to think he’ll keep scoring. As for Ward, he spends a lot of time battling three or four defenders on his own on this system, so his opportunities are limited. He’s not scored enough this season regardless, so I have a feeling he’ll be on his way in the summer when his contract is up. He’s been good for us at times but he’s also one of our top earners, I think, so letting him go will free up wages and allow us to look at other options.
I take your point re Pearson, but defenders don’t tend to go on prolonged scoring runs.
It’s fantastic what Warnock has managed so far, it’s a shame he didn’t come in about 5 matches sooner as I would have liked to see if Kyle Hudlin would have flourished in his system. But it’s too important not to change things now as every game is very important. Perhaps next season.
Agreed. The dream scenario would be to win the next few, so they can blood some youngsters in the last few games. Hudlin is scoring plenty in the B Team, but from the clips I’ve seen, he looks a bit slow and awkward. I’d be surprised if he started a game for us any time soon but while we have the 5 subs rule, he’s a good option to throw on to cause chaos if we’re chasing a game because of his size.
It’s very unusual for a defender to keep scoring so I doubt if Person will score again now Rudoni has eventually found the net he is the most likely for me to score and the same for u Koroma