Huddersfield Town shared the points in their home game with Stoke, drawing 1-1. It was a hard-fought and well-balanced match which could have gone either way. Given both managers felt their side should have won it after the match, a draw is probably about right.
Here are my thoughts on the match…
Ince finally scores
What a relief! Tom Ince has finally scored for Huddersfield Town. I’ve been tipping him to get off the mark soon since the summer, but the day finally arrived. It was a relatively simple chance, but he held his nerve and guided the ball home. This was the kind of lucky break he needed to get started.
Now he’s off the mark I can see him being a new player. His all-round play has been good since arriving at Town, but his confidence has faded over the course of his barren spell. Now commentators and pundits can shut up about him having the most shots without scoring and he can concentrate on catching Depoitre as Town’s top scorer.
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The Collin Quaner Show
The reason Ince didn’t have to do much when scoring his goal was because Collin Quaner had single-handedly torn Stoke’s defence to ribbons. While his assist was the unmistakable high-point of his performance, he was incredible all afternoon.
Regular readers of the blog will know my love for Big Col runs deep so my praise can’t always be trusted, but the sponsors picked him as man of the match too. His direct running, pace, and bumbling style was too much for Stoke.
In fact, it would only be fair if Collin Quaner personally paid for the counselling Stoke’s defenders are going to need after he ruined them. Kevin Wimmer in particular is going to need the support of his family and friends to recover from what happened at the John Smith’s Stadium. When he closes his eyes to sleep at night he’s going to be haunted by the vision of Collin Quaner running straight at him.
Odd new approach to defending corners
I’ve grumbled earlier in the season that Town pull every player into the box to defend corners. Personally I think your shortest attacking player should be left on the edge of the centre circle, so the opposition have to hold defenders back. Instead of positioning one player up field for Stoke’s corners we played three men on the half-way line.
Initially I thought a few players had got confused and thought it was a goal kick and not a corner, but we did it at least three times. There’s some logic to the strategy, as it meant that Stoke had to decide whether to mark the players we left up or fill up the penalty box.
The tactic almost paid off when we cleared a corner upfield and Löwe and Lolley linked up, but they couldn’t quite get the breakaway run they were trying to open up. It was an interesting tactic, even if it didn’t pay off.
Crouch, like Stoke, is awkward but effective
I’d argue that Town played the better football, but it has to be said that Stoke created chances and could have scored more. They were most dangerous when punting the ball up to Peter Crouch and feeding off the second balls.
Peter Crouch isn’t pretty to watch, but he gets results. Stoke could avoid the problem of playing through Town’s high press by playing long balls up to their big striker and bypassing midfield. Crouch won a total of 18 aerial duels in the match, 78% of the ones he went up for.
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A point was probably about right
I thoroughly enjoyed watching this game and thought it was a well-balanced contest. There were a roughly even number of good chances for each side, most of Stoke’s coming in a mad 30-second scramble which saw Lössl produce two world-class saves. There were also two penalty decisions denied, one for each team.
I’ve been surprised to see some Town fans complain that we didn’t win this game. While we certainly had the momentum going into the closing stages, Stoke had their chances too and it’s worth remembering that they’ve been operating at this level for a number of years, so it’s impressive we managed to play the better football even if we couldn’t win the game.