notes – Terrier Spirit – Huddersfield Town FC blog

Oct232024 by Terrier Spirit6 Comments

Fancy jackets, a dog in a frock, reality TV stars and go-go-gadget legs – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s draw with Wrexham

Matches

Huddersfield Town drew their first game of the season against Wrexham last night, with neither side able to break the deadlock in an entertaining and hard-fought game. While a win would have been better, taking a point from a game where Town spent long periods under pressure shows a notable improvement from their recent slump, where they would crumble at the first sign of difficulty. It's too early to say Huddersfield Town's demons have been banished but this point at least shows that the team is capable of showing a bit of mental toughness when up against it. It was also nice to see Town ride out a tricky spell and then become the better team after a bit of adversity. It's open to debate, but my impression from the game was that Wrexham were the better team in the first half, To...

Oct72024 by Terrier Spirit6 Comments

The Herbie Kane Soap Opera – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 2-0 win over Barnsley

Matches

What a difference a game can make! After the gloom was starting to gather over Town following four consecutive defeats, the team put in a much-needed display against Barnsley on Saturday, winning 2-0 and deservingly coming out on top. While one game doesn't change everything and the problems we've seen in recent games could still be festering under the surface, this game did feel significant beyond the result and could potentially act as a turning point in the season. It will hopefully mark the end of our poor run and be a transition into a happier spell for Michael Duff and his squad of players. Here are some of my thoughts from the game. Town dominated the first half without getting their reward Like the way heavyweight boxers will probe with their jabs in the early roun...

Oct42024 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

Birmingham show Town how it’s done – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 1-0 defeat to Birmingham City

Matches

Eskimos are thought to have 40 to 50 different words for snow, because they experience so many different varieties of the stuff. Therefore, at this stage in Huddersfield Town's history, Town fans should probably have at least a hundred different words to describe what a defeat feels like. We've become so accustomed to the various feelings that losing a football match can evoke that it makes supporting this football team seem more like an act of penance than something people literally choose to do with their free time for actual entertainment and willingly hand their money over to watch. You would need a deep and crude vocabulary to be able to fully express the number of defeats we've sat through over the years. So the type of defeat Huddersfield Town succumbed to in Birmingham on...

Sep302024 by Terrier Spirit15 Comments

Huddersfield Town sabotage themselves again – Notes on 2-1 defeat to Reading

Matches

Can you imagine having a haircut and saying it was mostly fine but the hairdresser got distracted with the clippers and shaved a chunk out of your ear? Or being really pleased with how an actor has performed in a play apart from the bit where they left that stage to take a personal phone call? Or enjoyed a meal out that was excellent but for the scabby plaster floating in the soup? Can you see where this is going? Huddersfield Town at Reading were much improved compared to recent outings but it counted for nothing because they still, at key moments, couldn't shake the habit of sabotaging themselves. So I'm not in the mood for handing out participation trophies for players that put in a decent shift but let themselves down at crucial moments. As we've seen so much in recent games,...

Sep272024 by Terrier Spirit10 Comments

A limp response – Notes on Town’s defeat to Blackpool

Matches

Huddersfield Town lost to Blackpool on Tuesday night in a defeat that saw them continue their poor form from Saturday's terrible performance against Northampton. While it wasn't quite as bad a showing as the 3-1 drubbing, the lows weren't quite so low, the fact we came into the game hoping to see a positive reaction after a defeat and were served up another plate of hot rubbish from Town made this defeat feel worse. I asked in the title of my post-Northampton article if that game was just a blip. Losing the next game with a lifeless effort from the Terriers suggests there are bigger problems than just a one-off bad day. This article will rake over the goals of another disappointing home display for the Terriers and speculate about what might happen next for Town. More bad goal...

Sep232024 by Terrier Spirit16 Comments

Was it a blip or part of a trend? Notes on Huddersfield Town’s dismal defeat to Northampton

Matches

When a football team stops the opposition from scoring, it's called a clean sheet but there isn't an opposite phrase for when you let goals in. Something like a befouled sheet would be an appropriate wording to use to describe when a team has sabotaged themselves by letting the ball over the line so easily three times in a game. So, against Northampton, Huddersfield Town soiled their sheets in self-destructive fashion. And then, having made the mess, continued to lie in it rather than getting up and sorting out the problem. Putting aside the scatological metaphor, Town's terrible mistakes for the goals were bad enough but I found the limp response to going behind and our inability to stage a comeback until the dying stages, when Northampton started to sit deeper and invited us on t...

Sep182024 by Terrier Spirit7 Comments

Notes on Huddersfield Town’s commanding 4-0 victory over Bolton Wanderers

Matches

Huddersfield Town won 4-0 away at Bolton on Saturday. While it started out as a cagey and closely matched contest, the game ended up as one-sided as you can imagine and Town rubbed their opponent's noses in it with a display of complete dominance in the second half. A slightly unsettling and perplexing experience for a Town fan. We're used to being on the receiving end of these drubbings, not handing them out. But it was weird in a good way and while Bolton were awful once their confidence had evaporated, Town were as good as their opponent was poor and the scoreline is a fair reflection of both sides overall performances. After a run of three defeats before the international break, this game felt significant in terms of Town's momentum. Now, rather than dwelling on a few recent wobble...

Aug292024 by Terrier Spirit9 Comments

New arrivals soften the blow of bruising defeat to Walsall

Matches, Transfers

I had a much gloomier article planned about Town's miserable Carabao Cup exit at the hands of Walsall, where Matty Pearson's silly red card incident led to Town going 2-0 up then collapsing to a 3-2 defeat. But Town made a double loan swoop from Wolverhampton Wanderers yesterday which addressed some of the biggest issues raised by the game on Tuesday night, so perhaps the tone of this article can now be a bit chirpier. Which is nice. So this is a two-in-one article, where I'm going to look back on the dismal night's work on Tuesday and take a look at the two new players that arrived at Town on Wednesday. Town deserved to be dumped out of the cup Despite being 1-0 up at the time of Matty Pearson's red card, they were second best even before being reduced to ten m...

Aug262024 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

Raised expectations, spurned chances, transfer needs and winning runs – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 1-0 win over Shrewsbury

Matches

The stadium looking beautiful in the sunshine Donald Trump, as loathsome as he is, does have a habit of coming out with good sound bites. He promised Republicans once that they would win so much under him that they would get bored of winning. Under Michael Duff, it seems that Town fans have also become bored of winning, so much so that a 1-0 victory is not enough and many fans, myself included, came away from this game feeling like they wanted more. More goals, more entertainment, more razzmatazz. After being whipping boys and serial losers for so long, we might be at risk of becoming the thing that we most disliked in the big-time Charlie opponents that we've faced over the years. The kind of fans that demand thumping victories and expect teams to roll over and let us waltz to victory...

Aug192024 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

Plenty to admire but also some grumbles as Town make it three wins in a row – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 2-1 win over Stevenage

Matches

Huddersfield Town won their third game in a row on Saturday and their second consecutive league game, seeing off Stevenage 2-1 in a game that started off one-sided but ended up edgy and uncomfortable for the Terriers. There was still plenty to admire in the performance from Michael Duff's new-look Huddersfield Town but the questions asked by Stevenage of Town in the second half caused some bad habits to slip back in and cause some slight concern despite still picking up the three points. It's perhaps a sign of how Town are making progress that we can now win games but still come away feeling unhappy, when in recent seasons any kind of win was so rare we'd be too delighted to pick up maximum points to quibble about performance issues. And while it's important to savour every victory...