Huddersfield Town drew with Hull on Saturday thanks to them conceding a 97th-minute equaliser. The game was far from a classic, as neither team found any fluency or played with any great flair but after Town led for so long, it was a bitter blow to not come away with all three points.
Having said all that, there were plenty of positives to take from a battling away performance against a team that had been in relatively good form before this game. Town will now look to another crucial away trip next Saturday when they play Blackpool in a relegation six-pointer.
Town pay the price for sitting deep
There was an element of bad luck with the late goal that Town conceded but we invited the possibility of Hull finding a way through by dropping deep and not showing enough ambition in the second half. I think it’s pretty sensible to not throw the kitchen sink at the opposition when you’ve got a narrow lead to protect when you’re away from home but Town offered far too little threat going forward in the second half in my opinion and that meant we had to ride out wave after wave of Hull attacks in the late stages of the game.
Annoyingly, I didn’t really see their goal coming as we looked well organised and they looked short of ideas and execution in the final third right until they scored. We seemed to be coping with whatever they threw at us but then one decent ball and a nice finish undid us with the final kick of the game.
In defence of Town, I’m not sure we made a conscious choice to not have much of the ball or to create any counter attacks in the second half, we just lack the creative talent in the middle of the park to dictate the tempo of the game, and have since Moody left for Brighton. Neither Hogg nor High have the skill or vision to get on the ball and decide the tempo if the game needs either speeding up or slowing down. We also don’t have the deep-lying playmaker that can ping balls from deep for our attackers to run on to and chase on the counter reliably. So instead we lost our ability to threaten Hull as the game drew on and that meant an equaliser grew more and more likely.
Fotheringham looks to the grown ups to get him out of trouble
Mark Fotheringham was very clear in his pre-match comments that he’s the only one that picks the team but his selection for this match seemed to suggest a change in philosophy, from youth to experience. Even with youngsters like Bilokapic, High and Rudoni on the pitch, it must have been one of the oldest starting elevens of the season for Town, with old heads like Lowton, Hogg, Lees, Pearson and Rhodes pushing up the average age.
Now Mark Fotheringham has a bigger squad available to him thanks to players returning from injury and extra bodies coming in on loan, I suspect we’ll see less and less of the academy lads that he’s had to rely on up to now. This is most likely a good thing in terms of our survival chances even if it might be a bit of a blow to the development of young prospects like Ben Jackson and Etienne Camara.
I can understand why Fotheringham would prefer to use experienced professionals at this stage of the season. They may not be as exciting and contain as much raw talent as a youth player but they will be able to produce a consistent level of performance from game to game, which young players struggle to maintain. I think from now on, we’ll only see the academy kids involved from the bench or if we have problems with injuries and suspensions.
Rudoni targeted for rough treatment
I didn’t think this was Rudoni’s best game, he struggled to make the kind of impact he’s been having in recent weeks but I don’t think that was entirely his fault. Hull did a number on him, with their players seeming to take it in turns to crunch him in tackles and by the time he was subbed off it looked like he was carrying an injury.
This special treatment that Rudoni received isn’t a huge surprise, as he’s becoming our most creative and threatening player, particularly now Sorba Thomas is off the boil and not even in the team. So Hull’s analysts will have watched our recent games and identified him as the source of our major threat and told their players to cut him down to size, most likely.
The challenge for Rudoni now is to work out how to keep his performance levels high, even if other teams are picking him out as the danger man. If they’re either doubling up on him or sything him down whenever he gets the ball, he needs a plan for how to deal with that. Sorba Thomas went through a similar learning curve last season when he was at the peak of his form and other teams tried to stop him playing.
Town can TAKE the lead but they can’t HOLD the lead
This game was the fourth game in a row that we’ve taken the lead (hooray!) but we’ve only gone on to win one of those games (boo!). In the run up to Christmas we had developed the problem of not being able to score; now we’ve got that monkey off our back, the new issue we’ve picked up is scoring and then letting the other team back into the game.
I don’t think the problem is entirely down to bad luck for Town. I think we’ve got the mentality of a relegation battling side at the moment, so if we get ahead we shut up shop and cling on to that lead and hope that’s enough. Which it often isn’t if you’ve got a bottom-end-of-the-table defence.
I don’t think it’s an explicit instruction coming from the bench but in the players minds, they are freezing up when they get their noses in front rather than looking to press home their advantage. It’s daft because Town are awful at defending a narrow lead, so they absolutely should push for another. If nothing else, while you’re attacking your opponent, it means they aren’t attacking you and it’s giving your defenders a breather.
It’s a decent point even if it should have been three
At the point Hull scored on Saturday, I was absolutely gutted but with time for the dust to settle it’s easier to look back and see that a draw away from home isn’t such a bad result. I was thinking a draw would be a good result before the game, so I should be happy with it now, right?
Yet, I still feel quite disappointed. I think this will be one of the games I’ll inevitably look back on and wonder about what might have been if Town ended up being relegated. This one and the Blackpool home game with the dodgy goal line technology
Bilokapic excellent debut doesn’t mask how big a loss Nicholls will be
I thought Nicholas Bilokapic had an excellent league debut and he made a couple of excellent saves which few would have found fault with him if he’d not kept out. On the other hand, I still think we missed Nicholls’ presence at the back of the pitch. Even when he’s not pulling off match-winning saves, there’s something reassuring about Nicholls that spreads calm at the back and we missed that on Saturday.
Not to mention, Nicholls is a lot more willing to ignore his coaches and boot it long if there isn’t a decent option whereas Bilokapic got away with some dodgy short passes against Hull which could have been punished against a more clinical opponent. It feels like young goalkeepers are coached to be pathologically attached to playing the ball short regardless of the team you’re playing in or the situation in the game. I feel like a footballing dinosaur for saying it but what’s wrong with booting it long and letting the striker trying to win a knock down to start off an attack?
Going back to the goalkeeping situation, it seems like Nicholls shoulder problem is a lot more than a minor niggle as Fotheringham confirmed we’d be bringing in a short-term goalkeeper in the very near future. This makes sense after the last time we decided to trust a youth keeper (Schofield) backfired quite badly but it’s almost certain whoever comes in will be a huge downgrade on Nicholls.
Survival seems possible now but it might be ugly to watch
I feel quite a lot more confident about our survival prospects based on recent performances but I’m a lot more pessimistic about the prospects of being entertained by watching Town between now and May. This is a necessary trade off I suppose, as results matter a lot more than the quality of football we get to watch but I think it’s going to be a grind.
After a few months in charge, I’m not really sure what kind of football Mark Fotheringham would play in an ideal world but in the circumstances he’s facing he has fallen into a pretty dour and functional brand of football. The 5-4-1 shape that he favours puts defensive solidity first and doesn’t create a lot of chances in open play for the striker to feed off.
I’d rather watch Town play attacking football and blow teams off the park but I suppose the reality is that a more open and expansive style of football would lead to heavy defeats and ultimately relegation with the squad we have available. So the system Fotheringham is currently using may not be setting pulses racing but it’s slowly accumulating the points we need and helping us secure our Championship status.
I agree re long clearances. The opposition can’t score when the ball is in their half.
I have said many times that sitting deep and giving up possession when we have one goal lead is a dangerous game to play. It only needs one error of lack of concentration to concede a goal.
It is a very fine line between saying that was a great defensive performance and that we shot ourselves in the foot.
I agree going defensive when Rudoni was injured when Surely a better option would have been bring on Sorba Thomas whom would have given Town a different dimension not just in his set play ability but he runs with ball takes players on in the opponents half of the pitch . A opportunity missed
I am less optimistic now than before. No matter how we parse it, Nicholls’ absence will mean shipping more goals. And with our huge problems scoring ourselves, I don’t see how we get the points we need. Finally, if improving fitness levels was MF’s biggest contribution, the fact that we’re conceding near the end of games doesn’t exactly cast him in a positive light. (Meanwhile look at the Baggies and –perhaps too early to say much, though, at Norwich. Hard to feel too great about our “loudmouthed trainer”– to go back to a nice image from Simon’s pen…)
Lowton looked quality. Very unlucky not to score and we really should have taken some of those half chances for 2-0.
Funny thing was that the substitutions were (other than Boyle) about getting players on who could carry us further up the pitch, but it just didn’t happen.
Wish we’d tried shooting from halfway a couple of times as their ‘keeper was so on for the lob with his positioning.