Sloppy goals, upward curves, dull but talented Foxes, and transfer needs – notes on Huddersfield Town’s defeat to Leicester

Huddersfield Town were soundly beaten by Leicester City yesterday, and I’m not sure there’s a lot we can draw from a 4-1 scoreline against a team that are in the wrong league and are certain to be promoted as champions unless they implode between now and May. While Town were far from perfect, particularly in the individual moments that led to the goals, this game was such a mis-match that it’s not much of a concern compared to other defeats we have suffered.

A bit too easy for Leicester

Having tried to keep some perspective in the introduction, it was a bit galling to watch Leicester toy with Town in much the same way that my cat plays with the half-dead mice it brings through the cat flap. My cat will disinterestedly bat around his prey for a while, bored and hoping to see a bit of life from the rodent it has stunned and dragged in the house. Then, when it realises there isn’t much life left, it will go in for the kill. That’s broadly speaking, what Leicester did to us. They barely broke a sweat but still managed to control the game enough to be completely in control. 

It wasn’t just their slow-paced tactics that were vaguely insulting to Town, the team selection also indicated how little of a threat they saw Town to be, with widespread squad rotation allowed for this game. Some of Leicester’s best players are nursing injuries but others were simply rested because were seen as too little of a threat to justify tiring out their star players on. And, in fairness, their second-string were more than good enough to brush us aside. That’s not such an indictment though, as Leicester have the kind of squad depth that Darren Moore can only dream of (he could only field 8 substitutes for this game, despite packing the bench with academy kids). 

There was an opportunity for me to be writing an article about how Leicester made the mistake of underestimating Huddersfield Town and paid the price. But sadly their low expectations turned out to be accurate on the day and we struggled to match them, despite not particularly disgracing ourselves. 

I think this is probably the only fixture in the Championship this season where we can probably expect defeat most of the time unless we catch Leicester on a particularly bad day. The rest of the teams in the Championship are not so strong that we can’t get the better of them if we are at our best. Burnley had a similar quality last season. This is perhaps a reminder of why the Championship is, in many ways, a more enjoyable level of football to watch than the Premier League. As much as it’s nice to be at the top table of English football and enjoying all the riches it brings, it’s also pretty miserable to go into so many games knowing you’re likely to lose most games unless your opponent has an uncharacteristic off day. 

Leicester were a bit dull

This might sound like sour grapes after being well beaten, but I actually wasn’t very impressed by the way that Leicester played. They obviously had better players than Town and they were able to produce moments of quality to score the goals they needed but their general all-round play wasn’t all that pleasing to watch. Their build-up play was so slow and ponderous for long periods that I found myself getting quite bored with the game. I guess that was most likely to try and grind Town down and tire out our defensive resolve but it was far from entertaining to watch. 

With Town sat deep and aiming to soak up pressure, I suppose there wasn’t a lot of space for Leicester to play expansive football but even allowing for that, they looked short of ideas. There were also a lot of silly mistakes too, with the ball regularly being passed straight to Huddersfield Town players. Sadly we failed to capitalise on these opportunities and tended to give the ball straight back to them.

Given the wealth of talent Leicester clearly have for this level of football, I think their level of entertainment value is pretty low, based on this game. I’d have liked to have seen a bit more zip and flair from them. Perhaps it was the number of changes to the team that led to a slightly disjointed performance.

There was a sloppiness to all of the goals Town conceded

Despite losing convincingly and having no quibbles about the outcome of the game or the margin of victory, I did find myself grumbling about all of the goals Town conceded. Individuals could have done better in each of them and that is a little frustrating when you consider that keeping things right at the back has actually been our strength in the last few months. Had we not been quite so generous at the back, Helik’s goal might have been more than just a consolation. Though, given how easy this game felt to Leicester, I think they had several gears they could have gone up through if they needed to lift their performance levels.

So, just to get it out of my system, here are my complaints about the goals we conceded: 

• The opener was a great finish but Wiles was stood off him and if he was tighter that shot would have been harder to get away.
• The second was a completely unmarked header from close range. This absolutely should not be happening.
• The third was another decent strike from Tom Cannon but Tom Lees will not want to see a replay of how easily he was outmuscled by a young striker, to send him clear through on goal.
• I thought the fourth was a great free kick in real time but the replays showed that Nicholls should really have got to it.

I hope I’ve not given the impression that I thought Leicester were lucky or that Town deserved anything from this game. If you concede four goals, regardless of the reasons, you will nearly always lose. My bigger point is that even though the opposition was talented, we made it a bit too easy for them to score and therefore didn’t give ourselves a chance in a game that was always going to be tough. 

Town still seem to be on an upward curve

Most teams in the Championship will go to Leicester and lose. Thankfully we’ve now played them twice, so have them out of the way early and can forget about them. I still think there are signs that Town’s overall trend is up despite losing this game and the Boro game last Friday.

Town weren’t awful against Leicester, we did the thing that’s worked for us fairly well lately of sitting deep and trying to hit them on the break. While it didn’t yield huge results we did ask a few questions of them. Several times we won the ball off them high up the pitch and better decision making and more skillful dribbling could have led to chances. I’ve seen Town look far more toothless against much less talented opponents this season, so there were some consolations  in a game that might seem like a drubbing if you only look at the scoreline or watch the highlights.

The improvement Town have shown in the last three games isn’t likely to lead to a victory against Manchester City but hopefully they can carry it into  the Plymouth game as that seems like a huge match now. If we win we’ll be just one point away from them, if they win they’ll be seven points above Town. The league table worries me a little bit, as both QPR and Sheffield Wednesday look capable of climbing out of the bottom three so Town need to make sure that they are not the ones that are being chased. 

Action off the pitch is almost as important as it will be on it

I find transfer rumours and talk about boardroom shenanigans a bit tiresome but this January there is bound to be a lot of chatter around Huddersfield Town. After a pretty poor summer transfer window, this is the chance for Kevin Nagle and his backroom team to put things right with some solid recruitment. 

Of course, we’ll no doubt hear the standard excuse that January is a difficult time of year to bring in decent players because clubs don’t want to sell. Doubly so in a year with teams losing players to international tournaments for many weeks (such as Yuta Nakayama). However, we made this particular bed for ourselves when we underinvested in the squad in the summer, so will have to lie in it. 

As well as being told that business is hard to do in January, the other cliche that is used to dampen fans’ enthusiasm is that deals get caught in chains and often can’t be pushed through until the end of the window. I’ve not a great deal of patience with this particular line either, as such a lot of transfer talk goes on in advance of the window opening between agents, players and clubs that deals could have been lined up long in advance if we really wanted to hit the ground running.

I don’t have a good inside knowledge of who Town are likely to target this month (though I did enjoy HTAFC Statto’s article where he speculated about who Town might be interested in) but there are tribes in the Amazonian rainforest that have been cut off from the society for hundreds for years that that still know that Town need to sign a striker. I would argue that we need players in just about every department. Seeing how weak our bench has been in recent games, how reluctant Darren Moore has been to make changes because he knows how much it will weaken the team on the pitch and how tired our main core of players look towards the end of matches, I’d say first-team quality players in almost any position would be beneficial right now. Their ability to step right in and play Championship football is more important than the exact position they play. 

It’s been suggested in interviews with the higher ups at Town that we will make use of the loan market. This feels like a fairly obvious move, as we didn’t bring in anyone decent on loan in the summer (sorry Tom Edwards). However, my concern with bringing in short term loans or free agents on short-term deals until the end of the season is that we’ll be no further forward in the summer and still have just as big a rebuild job – in fact bigger because we’ll most likely lose more players then. So a sprinkling of quality on loan makes sense but I’d like to see some permanent signings too, so we can see some planning for the future or at least loanees coming in with options to buy in the summer.

Will Jordan Rhodes be recalled?

I thought it was probably useful to pull the issue of Jordan Rhodes’ recall to the squad out as a separate talking point from the general transfer window discussion. Will we bring him back from his prolific loan spell at Blackpool? Blackpool certainly won’t want him to leave, Rhodes.himself would most likely rather stay in the place where he’s scoring regularly and getting games but the parent club holds the cares in this situation so I would have thought recalling him in the next few days would be the sensible thing to do.

Currently Town essentially don’t have a fit striker. Bergzorg, Ward and Harratt are all injured and while Hudlin is being named on the bench, he’s not playing a significant role in games. And if you’re the only fit striker in the squad and you’re not getting picked by a manager that insists on playing a formation that uses two strikers, then you can safely assume the manager doesn’t fancy you.

So I think Rhodes coming back would be a good idea, even if it was just to cover us for the next few weeks while we try to get signings over the line. We need more than one striker through the door in my eyes anyway, so I see no problem with bringing him back and still actively pursuing a striker. And while Rhodes might not suit Moore’s desired style, I think a striker that is in goal-scoring form, albeit one league down, is too good a prospect to turn down.

And if Rhodes doesn’t get with the current set up and we find ourselves in the unlikely position of having too many strikers after signing a glut of goalscorers this window, I suspect Blackpool would be willing to take him back off us for another loan or even pay a small transfer fee. (Because Rhodes played for us in the League Cup this season, Town or Blackpool are the only EFL team he can play for in the 23/24 season, so we can’t send him anywhere else.)