Predicted Town XI for tonight, being consistently inconsistent, the Sorba slump and the Swansea inquest – Another Huddersfield Town roundup

Huddersfield Town were beaten 1-0 by Swansea at the weekend, in a game that could easily have been a much heavier loss for the Terriers if it hadn’t been for excellent goalkeeping work from Nicholls and some wasteful finishing from the Swans. Thankfully there isn’t a lot of time to dwell on this defeat as Blackburn will be travelling to the John Smiths’ tonight to give us a chance of arresting the mini slump we’ve entered.

Prior to the Forest game the weekend before last, things had been incredibly positive around Huddersfield Town football club but consecutive defeats have brought the doom mongers out from wherever they hide when things are going well. Avoiding defeat tonight is essential to change Town’s momentum and keep them at the right end of the table.

Here’s another roundup article, looking back at the Swansea game and ahead to tonight’s fixture.

Are Town actually a bit rubbish?

I remember my Grandma telling me about how her dad used to go watch Town and when they won he’d gleefully tell her about how good a team they were, only to return after the next match and complain they were nowhere near good enough – this is well over 70 years ago. So Town fans swinging from extremes of emotion depending on the most recent result isn’t a new phenomenon but it does feel like this current Town team seem to be capable of higher highs and lower lows than I’ve been used to over my time of following Town. 

Some of Town’s games this season have seen us look genuinely excellent, at times we’ve put on a disciplined defensive masterclass and others we’ve unleashed hell and convincingly beaten our opponents. But when we’ve been bad we’ve really stunk. So the answer to whether Town are a bit rubbish is yes but also no, it just seems to depend which version of Town turn up for any given game. 

It’s worth acknowledging that our opponents have had an outsized effect on how well Town play. All of our good results have had an element of playing our opponent at the right time, such as Reading when they were on a terrible run, Sheffield United when they were still adjusting to Championship football and Preston when they were in a mess.

Truly good teams can get results regardless of their opponents and in the Championship there are only a very small number of teams that Huddersfield Town need to genuinely fear playing and the remainder are all available for the taking if we play to our full potential. 

So, after a lot of rambling, I think we’re not rubbish but we’re nowhere near the fully rounded team that we’d need to be to have genuine aspirations of competing at the top end of this league. Instead, the best we can hope for this season is to at least be consistently inconsistent, picking up enough wins to be safe alongside the defeats to be safe. After last season’s post-Christmas capitulation there will always be a nagging fear that a minor slump like these last two games could be the start of another slide into oblivion but this year’s team seem better equipped to turn things around than last year’s.

What went wrong against Swansea?

My impression of the Swansea game was that we just couldn’t cope with Swansea’s pressing and that meant we couldn’t get any quality possession. Instead we were stuck passing it around at the back and regularly made mistakes that could have led to goals. It was like watching our defenders playing Russian roulette, waiting for the inevitable blunder to come along. Things tightened up in the second half but the game could have been out of sight by half time if Swansea had been more ruthless in front of goal. 

The second-half improvement seemed to be a result of moving the ball up field more quickly and getting the widemen on the ball more quickly than we managed in the first half. We also managed to hold the ball better and made fewer silly mistakes in possession. Though it has to be acknowledged that Swansea sat back more and allowed us to have the ball but only in areas where we couldn’t hurt them.

We still didn’t manage a shot on target all game, so neither half of Saturday’s game was good enough. It’s easy to point the finger at the striker when Town offer so little threat but it was a collective failure that saw Town fail to test a keeper we know from bitter experience is capable of making the odd howler. Having been the victim of Hamer’s past aberrations, it feels crazy that we didn’t put him under pressure or even give him a solitary save to make. 

Sorba’s struggles

One of the key differences between the last two defeats and the previous good spell we had was Sorba Thomas’ form. After an electrifying start to the season, Thomas has tailed off a bit in these last few games and hasn’t been the unplayable force we saw earlier on. 

We all knew that he couldn’t maintain his blistering early-season form but he’s really tailed off lately and I hope he’s getting support behind the scenes with this. Opposition teams are now more aware of what he can do and there’s a tendency to double up on him when he picks up the ball now. 

Being the recipient of special attention from opposition defences is a huge compliment but needs a plan to overcome. Some players are good enough to ride out the additional attention they receive but if that doesn’t work there’s no shame in drawing defenders towards you and then quickly switching play to give someone else the chance to find the gaps will be opening up. 

If Thomas continues to struggle then it may be better to give him a spell on the sidelines to try and regain his form away from the glare of playing first team matches. Sadly we have very few options to play right wingback, so it’s more likely that he’ll have to play his way back into form. Having shown he can be superb on his day, his challenge now is to hit those heights on a regular basis.

What to expect against Blackburn?

Call me a negative Nancy but the short answer to the above question is probably defeat. Blackburn won heavily against Cardiff at the weekend, so will come into this game on a high. They’ve got some of the Championship’s most potent attacking threats and Town have lost two games and could be entering another period of decline after a promising start to the season. 

Playing devil’s advocate, Town have got their own attacking threats that can cause Blackburn problems and have the “wounded animal” element of needing to put in a performance after two poor outings in a row. It’s fairly typical of Town to pull out an impressive performance just at the moment you’re convinced they’re garbage, so tonight could see a turn around in our fortunes. 

Carlos was quite revealing in his pre-match comments, stating how he won’t be forced into knee-jerk reactions and will persevere with his style of football even if it sometimes costs us goals. I read this as meaning that we’ll be seeing plenty more playing out from the back and more struggling to get the ball out of our own half. It will also mean we’ll probably still play three central defenders too.

The bookies have Town and Blackburn at very similar prices to win tonight, which seems like they may be underestimating how bad Town have been in their recent games. I think a draw with an improved performance would be a good outcome. Stopping this losing streak is important and offering fans a bit of hope that things can get better are the main goals for tonight’s game and a win would be the icing on the cake. 

Predicted lineup to take on Blackburn

Corberan has already revealed one of the harder to predict positions, saying that Ward will be the starting striker barring an unexpected injury (always a possibility with Ward). 

He also said that Hogg and O’Brien were injury doubts and faced late fitness tests. I noticed Hogg took a whack on his hip against Swansea and seemed to struggle with the aggravation to an area where he’s historically had injury problems, so I’m going to assume he’s out. O’Brien is trickier to tell as he’s usually able to shake off niggles so I’m going to assume he can be patched up and put out on the pitch tonight even if he’s not at 100% fitness.

Hogg making way for Vallejo might not be such a bad thing anyway. Nobody else in the team can give the organisational or defensive workrate of Hogg but Vallejo brings a different set of skills to the table and is capable of spraying balls from deep that give attackers something to run on to. He’s just a bit slow when defending and can easily get overrun, so will need help from his midfield colleagues. 

If O’Brien can’t play then Scott High is the most similar player we’ve got to fill in for him but given he’s not played for over a month, it may be that Duane Holmes is dropped in despite his recent appearances coming as a winger or number ten. 

I’m still unimpressed by Turton so far and don’t see the logic of continually selecting him despite his form being poor. While Sorba Thomas isn’t great defensively as a right wingback, he at least gives our opponents problems when going forward, whereas Turton lacks attacking ability and is error prone in defence too. I’m not writing Turton off by any stretch of the imagination but he’s clearly not comfortable as a wingback and would be better being dropped until we revert to four at the back with more traditional fullbacks.

In terms of attackers, surely Koroma has to come back in after being dropped at the weekend. Not that he was excellent when he came off the bench but he’s still our most threatening player and it seems a bit mad to leave him out as he can alway pop up with a goal even when not in top form. Sinani hasn’t set the world alight in recent games either but he’s shown enough in earlier games to justify keeping him in the team in the hope he can produce some moments of magic in the final third.

Goalkeeper: Nicholls

Defence: Pearson, Lees, Colwill

Midfield: Thomas, Vallejo, O’Brien, Toffolo

Attack: Sinani, Ward, Koroma