notes – Page 4 – Terrier Spirit – Huddersfield Town FC blog

Apr122023 by Terrier Spirit5 Comments

Town break a record, riding our luck, Vaclik saves & Pearson marks drinks break – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s draw with Blackburn

Matches

Huddersfield Town drew 2-2 with Blackburn Rovers on Easter Monday and it was either two points thrown away after holding a 2-0 lead at half time or a valuable point gained after being completely outplayed for the entirety of the 90 minutes, depending on your perspective. While the 90th-minute equaliser from Blackburn was a sickener at the time, I’ve since reflected that it’s a decent outcome for Town and the point could be very valuable in the fight for survival. I’ll cover some of my thoughts on the game in this blogpost. Record breaking Terriers! The nerds at Opta have confirmed that no Championship team have completed fewer passes since they started counting them on their fingers and toes back in 2013. We registered just 63 successful passes over the course of the 90 minut...

Apr92023 by Terrier Spirit5 Comments

Watford = talent without passion, Rudoni and Harrat goals, counterattacking masterclass, Warnock tribute – Notes on Watford away

Matches

During Mark Fotheringham’s time as Town manager he often talked about how “on another day” things would have gone differently. Unfortunately for him, those days never seemed to come. However, under Neil Warnock, we seem to be having quite a few of those days, where things go our way. It happened again for Town against Watford, where we went behind but then scored three goals and won the game. It isn’t good luck that’s led to Town recent upturn in results, it’s, as Neil Warnock pointed out to the club’s media team, having a good manager. We’ve now got a boss that knows how to use the players we have in such a way that gives us a chance of getting results like these. Rather than bemoaning our bad luck, we’re actually making our opponents curse their luck instead. It’s not always pretty, ...

Feb62023 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

Fotheringham gets it wrong, QPR bad, the triple sub lift and old hands falter – notes on Huddersfield Town’s draw with QPR

Matches

Huddersfield Town drew with QPR on Saturday in a game which saw Town look absolutely abysmal in the first half but actually finished the game on the front foot and were pushing for the victory. It will depend on your perspective on Town (and maybe life in general) whether there was enough to satisfy you in Town's good moments to offset how bad they were at their worst in this game. We really stank when we were bad but once Knockaert came on in the closing stages we suddenly looked like we could attack with purpose and creativity. Judging from the boos at the end of the game, many fans remain unconvinced but I think there was enough to encourage the optimistic Town fan. Team selection and tactics all wrong I think a lot of Town's difficulties in the first half of this ...

Jan292023 by Terrier Spirit13 Comments

A tepid defence of Fotheringham, dour Huddersfield, inept tactics, Hungbo’s promise & bad passsing – Notes on Coventry away

Matches

Huddersfield Town lost to Coventry yesterday. Defeat is a familiar feeling to Town fans this season but this one was a particularly hard one to take, as it was a poor performance, with inept management from the sidelines and hinted towards worrying signs for the rest of the season. While Town are still within touching distance of safety in the league table, their inability to create decent chances against a Coventry team that were low on confidence and there for the taking is deeply concerning. The lack of ideas, both on and off the field meant there was little to feel positive about after the game. Here are some of my thoughts on the game: Hamer and Gyokeres the difference between the two teams I thought this game was fairly evenly matched for long periods. Town had the majo...

Jan162023 by Terrier Spirit6 Comments

Rudoni targetted by bullies, ugly football, missing Lee, sitting deep and turning to the grown ups – notes on Huddersfield Town’s draw with Hull

Matches

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...

Dec292022 by Terrier Spirit2 Comments

Why was Sorba Thomas dropped?, Diarra the difference maker, the change that improved Rudoni and is Fotheringham actually quite good? – Notes on the win at Preston

Matches

I appreciate this post-Preston game blog is a bit late, given we’re playing Rotherham tonight but I’ve been struck down with the bug that’s going round, so I’ve got behind on things. The win at Preston was huge, not least because it was the first time we’d won there in around 500 years (my zero key got stuck but it feels about right). The three points also mean we can now imagine a world where we’re not stuck at the bottom of the table and things don’t feel quite so miserable. Or at least they don’t for me, because I have an unfathomable tendency towards optimism when it comes to Huddersfield Town, despite years of evidence where events have played out the other way. Anyway, here’s my look back at the Preston game…. if I get the chance I’ll do a team prediction for tonig...

Dec202022 by Terrier Spirit7 Comments

Pretendance, Watford’s weird tactics, bleak future, gulf in quality – Notes on Town’s loss to the Hornets

Matches

There have been a few days for the dust to settle on Saturday’s defeat to Watford and it still hurts. Even though it was one of the division’s better teams and Town played relatively well in patches, we still looked completely toothless and struggled to lay a glove on our opponent. The post-match reaction that I’ve seen makes me think that other fans may have taken the defeat harder than me but it was still a bitter pill to swallow. With off the pitch issues looking almost as bleak as the results on the pitch, it’s not a great time to be a Town fan. But things can turn around quickly in football (it’s only seven months since we were two denied VAR decisions from a place in the Premier League). Here are a few of my thoughts on Saturday’s game. A positive start sq...

Nov142022 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

Passed to death, revealing xG stats, the table is weird and getting the World Cup break right – notes on Huddersfield Town’s draw with Swansea

Matches

Wins are always happy occasions, even if you have to win ugly, it’s always nice to take three points. Defeats are never nice, even if you play well and lose valiantly, you’ve still tasted failure and that’s hard to take. Draws are awkward though as you have to make up a story to go along with the point that you take away from the game. So some Town fans will have come away from the game against Swansea feeling happy about a battling performance where our injury ravaged side took a point from one of the league’s better teams and “on another day” (Fotheringham’s favourite post-match line) we could have taken all three. But other Town fans will have walked out of the stadium feeling frustrated at our lack of ambition and cutting edge in the final third, bemoaning how readily we allowed t...

Nov92022 by Terrier Spirit12 Comments

The Josh Ruffels finishing school, understudies shine, QPR poor, goal dissected – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s first away win of the season

Matches

When Danny Ward spurned a presentable chance in the opening seconds of last night’s game and then QPR went straight up the other end and scored the opening goal it felt like it was going to be a long night for Town. And then it suddenly wasn’t. The script of recent weeks was torn up and instead of Town playing well but ultimately losing, they got their noses in front and then hung on until the final whistle. It wasn’t always pretty but Town deserved the three points for showing the character and nerve to dig in and resist relentless pressure from QPR. The second half was hard to watch from a Town perspective as we went long periods without meaningful possession but we stuck to our task and came away with three vital points and a renewed sense of hope. Here are a few of my thoughts o...

Nov62022 by Terrier Spirit8 Comments

Trying to find positives, goal drought, Fotheringham’s tunnel exit, mounting pressure and looking ahead – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s defeat to Blackburn

Matches

Huddersfield Town lost 1-0 to Blackburn yesterday afternoon in a game that was frustratingly similar to their recent outings, where they actually played pretty well for long spells of the game but a lack of cutting edge up front and a momentary lapse at the back meant they left Ewood Park empty handed. There’s no point talking about what Town deserved or not from this game because you only win games by scoring goals and Town’s players are currently showing a complete inability to get the ball into the back of the net and it’s causing us a great deal of pain at the moment and could ultimately cost us our place in the Championship. But yet, we went away from home with a weakened team and went toe-to-toe with one of the division’s best teams for 90 minutes and looked pretty...