Predicted starting XI and pregame talking points for Huddersfield Town v Manchester City in the Carabao Cup

It wasn’t long ago that Huddersfield Town were in the same league as Manchester City and we even managed to get a vital point away at the Etihad at the end of our first season in the Premier League, which set up the heroics we saw at Chelsea shortly after. So it’s a mixture of emotions that comes as we host Manchester City in the League Cup tonight. OK, it’s nice to see Town play against one of the big boys but it’s sad that we’re now so far from meeting them in league competition.

Lee Grant will have to decide whether to field a strong team in this match or whether he’ll preserve his best players for the less glamorous but more important game against Exeter on Saturday. 

Here’s my predicted lineup and pre-game talking points for this match…

Predicted Huddersfield Town lineup to take on Manchester City

Goalkeeper – Goodman

Defence – Sorensen, Feeney, Wallace, Roughan

Midfield – Vost & Kasumu

Attackers – Harness, Wiles, Roosken

Striker – May

Lee Nicholls has been in goals during Owen Goodman’s 3-match ban for his red card at Barnsley but with that suspension served, I think he’ll come straight back in. Either because Nicholls will be first choice now and Goodman has to settle for cup appearances or he’ll be playing in the league on Saturday so needs tonight’s game to get back match sharpness in a lower stakes game. 

At the back, injuries limit the amount of rotation I think we’ll see. I’m guessing Lynden Gooch isn’t quite ready yet nor Mickel Miller, so Sorensen and Roughan seem the most likely to start in the fullback positions. Radinio Balker would be an obvious choice to bring in for this game but he seems to be frozen out of the first team, so that would mean Feeney and Wallace are the obvious choices if Low is rested. 

With Herbie Kane and Marcus McGuane injured and Ryan Ledson has looked jaded recently, David Kasumu and young Daniel Vost are my predictions for midfield. McGuane hasn’t been confirmed as available but he did feature in last week’s training video, looking like he was back in full training, so he could be available off the bench in this game. 

The attacking wide and number ten positions are quite uncertain at the moment, with Grant still not sure on his best options in these areas. I suspect he may choose to add a bit of experience and discipline for these roles, as this game will require a lot of defensive work while Man City retain the ball. Harness, Wiles and Rooksen are the most experienced and defensively solid options we have for these areas. The likes of Alves, Redmond and Castledine are more likely to be useful against Exeter at the weekend, where we’re going to need a bit of creative flair.

I’d consider Alfie May and Joe Taylor as broadly equal quality options, though Taylor has more pace and May is better at the off-the-ball work. Like with the other attack-minded positions, I think Grant will go with experience to help keep us in this game. 

Will Lee Grant bring his autograph book?

There can be no debate about the phenomenal impact Pep Guardiola has had on football in his time as a manager but I was quite surprised how gushing Lee Grant was in his praise for Pep in his prematch comments. An underdog manager would usually look to downplay the gulf in quality when they’re coming up against a bigger team but Grant did the opposite. While he’s not wrong, Grant seemed perfectly willing to accept Man City will most likely beat us and it could be ugly if we’re not at our best. 

Grant sounded like a kid in a sweet shop when answering questions about meeting Pep after the game. While he didn’t mention bringing an autograph book, it was pretty clear that Grant really loves Pep and is a bit in awe of his opposite number in tonight’s game. 

I suppose there’s nothing wrong with Lee Grant giving a mini TED Talk about why he loves Guardiola so much but I hope this isn’t the message he’s giving the players. He needs to convince them that Manchester City have weaknesses and he knows how to help them exploit them. And after Grimsby knocked out Manchester United in the last round, it’s really not that far-fetched that we could get something against Manchester City. Particularly when there’s doubt about the strength of the Manchester City team that will start the game.

Will Manchester City play a very weakened team? 

Pep spoke to the press yesterday about this game and was keen to moan about fixture congestion and suggested he’ll be giving his academy kids a chance in tonight’s game so he can rest his main stars. If anyone remembers You Bet with Matthew Kelly, I think Guardiola will approach selection like the bidding worked in that game show, he’ll try to select the minimum quality team he can get away with and still get through to the next round.

The challenge for Town will be to exploit any weaknesses we can if Manchester City’s youth players are chanced in this game. We’ve already hammered Newcastle’s Under 21s in the Vertu Trophy, so we’ve proven we can boss around youngsters if needed. I suspect the quality of the kids close to Man City’s first team will be significantly higher than Newcastle’s youngsters that we saw but the principle will be the same. Youth team football is vastly different to men’s football, so we may be able to exploit an edge if there are a lot of youngsters in City’s starting lineup.

Can we do better than last time against Manchester City? 

I called back earlier to our Premier League encounters with Manchester City but we’ve met them since then in the FA Cup in January of 2024 back in the Darren Moore days. We lost that game 5-0 and despite a valiant effort from Town, we just couldn’t compete with City. We actually kept the scores level for 33 minutes, but that was mostly due to City playing with their food for half an hour before turning up the tempo once they’d completely worn us out. 

While I wouldn’t be daft enough to predict a win tonight, I do think we’re likely to do better in this game than we did in our last encounter. While City are obviously a quality team and even their reserves and youngsters will be mostly internationals who play on a different level to Town’s team. But we’ve already knocked out two teams from higher divisions in this competition and if we play like we did against Sunderland in the last round, I can see us giving Man City a tricky evening at least.

While Town go into most League One games as favourites or at least being capable of going toe-to-toe wiht any opposition, we’ll have to play a much more disciplined game tonight to remain competitive. So I expect we’ll see Town play in a much more compact shape and try to not leave any gaps for City to exploit. The tricky bit will be to play this way but retain some sort of threat on the counter, to relieve constant pressure. After seeing us do this job pretty well against Sunderland, I think we at least know what we need to do, even if putting that plan into action will be easier said than done.