Huddersfield Town had their best win of the season so far on Saturday when they beat Plymouth 2-0 on the south coast. Beating a team that was top of the table, away from home, is good regardless of the performance but the manner of the victory was even more encouraging with Town playing some excellent football at times. Plymouth Argyle looked shell shocked for a spell during the first half when Town absolutely played them off the park and created chance after chance.
Most people watching this game would agree that the 2-0 scoreline flattered Plymouth and sharper finishing or their goalkeeper having an off day could have resulted in a much bigger scoreline. Though at least only leading by two goals going into the match’s closing stages meant we could have another go at defending a two goal lead, after throwing one away against Sheffield Wednesday the weekend before. This time Town showed a lot more composure and game management in those final minutes and Plymouth didn’t get the opportunities to come back into the game that we allowed Wednesday in the game before. Progress.
Having the cheat code for League One
When I used to play video games as a child I would often tap out button combinations to access secret powers. Unlimited lives, or special power ups would make it straight forward to beat a game. Up, down, left, right, B, A, start is still etched on my memory. When Huddersfield Town play in League One with Derensili Sanches Fernandes in the lineup we are basically doing the same thing.
DSF looked like a very exciting signing when he was announced, arriving from the Netherlands with the reputation of being the dribble king. It wasn’t quite clear how well his form in a different European league would translate to the English third tier. We’ve seen players struggle to adjust to the rough and tumble nature of the football over here. Now we’ve played ten games, I think he might be the best bit of transfer business we’ve done since Karlan Grant (both buying him for very little and selling him for an inflated fee).
There had been talk that Fernandes saved his best form for home games but I think this Plymouth performance was up there with his best and some of his attacking play in the first half was absolutely sensational. He worked hard for his chances too, often pressing aggressively to force a mistake or to nick the ball off a defender when we were out of possession. There was one run that he had where he beat four men like it was nothing, as though he’s playing the game in slow motion and can see the defender’s attempted tackles before they’ve even started.
Martin Drury has said that Fernandes is currently playing through a recurring knee injury, which makes me wonder if he could be even better than this if he was fully fit. While he’s able to put in contributions like this, it’s going to be hard to take him out of the team unless he’s physically incapable of playing.
Town’s best performance of the season
Maybe it’s just because I’ve not got a very good memory but I can’t remember seeing Town play better for a long time. We moved the ball forward quickly, linked up well when we attacked and repeatedly carved open Plymouth’s defence and created shooting opportunities. We ended up having 20 shots in this game and really should have scored a lot more than just two goals from all those chances we created.
As I mentioned in the introduction, Town’s game management was much better in this game compared to Sheffield Wednesday too. Because I’m so used to being disappointed by Huddersfield Town, it felt like history repeating itself when Plymouth came back into the game in the later stages but Town stood up to their attacking play. Rather than drop back and trying to soak up pressure we kept pushing forward and attacking, which meant we weren’t having to withstand a constant barrage of attacks on our goal.
The defence deserves a bit of credit too, as Plymouth are one of the most direct teams in the league and regularly pumped balls up for their strikers to compete for. Ibane Bowat’s stats for this game show that he won an impressive 11 aerial duels with a 73% success rate, which is even more impressive when you consider he’s usually on the left of the back three and has almost been a left-back at times. With Murray Wallace out injured, Bowat moved into the central role in the back three and stood up very well to the test. Joe Low also looked very assured and strong at the back, which is impressive when you consider he’s mostly been restricted to playing in the Jersey Mike’s Trophy until this game.
Town can be even better than this
As good as this performance was, I think that there’s still more to come from this Huddersfield Town team and we can be even better. Here are a few areas I think we can improve on that will make us strong promotion contenders:
Finishing our chances: If you create 20 shooting opportunities in every game it doesn’t really matter if you only finish two of them because that’s usually enough to win a game. The problem with that sort of conversion rate is that we need to pretty much play other teams off the park to generate enough chances to get those goals. We aren’t likely to be able to sustain these kinds of performances every week, sometimes twice a week, so a more lethal approach in front of goal will mean we can put games to bed earlier.
Breaking down the low block: It would be easy enough to argue that this season’s Huddersfield Town are decent in games against the league’s better teams (beating Oxford United and Plymouth and nearly beating Sheffield Wednesday) but struggle against the league’s less fancied teams (defeat to Bromley and dropping points against Mansfield and Notts County). When we play teams that try to attack us it creates spaces for our forwards to exploit in behind them. When we come up against teams that park the bus we struggle to carve out decent chances. Our next couple of games against Peterborough and Wigan will most likely see us back in that position of having a lot of possession but coming up against teams that aren’t taking too many risks when they go forward. When we work out a way to beat these sorts of teams we’ll really be moving in the right direction.
Managing games: I’ve praised Huddersfield Town for how they managed this game out but I think it’s still an area to work on. While it’s nice to win games by playing excellent football, top teams can also grind out results when they’re not able to get into full flow. I’d like to see us get a scruffy goal and then use all of the dark arts available to make that single goal enough to win. Currently I don’t think we have the collective personality for edging tight games but at least we’re showing we can find other ways to win.
AOB
Humphreys captain – Unusually for me, I managed to predict the exact starting lineup in my team prediction article but I was surprised by Martin Drury’s choice of captain for this game. With club captain Ryan Ledson injured, stand-in captain Murray Wallace also injured and experienced old heads like Jack Whatmough and Radinio Balker crocked too, Drury wasn’t overwhelmed with captain options but even still, it’s unusual to pick a young loanee to captain the team. Drury explained after the game that he trusts Humphreys and other players (I’m guessing Joe Low and Sean Roughan) needed to concentrate on their own game, so he didn’t want to give them extra responsibility. Given that we played so well in this game, this now looks like a good bit of management but it was brave as it would have been used as a stick to beat Drury with if we hadn’t played well.
Drury’s wife needs an apology – I sincerely hope that Mrs Drury doesn’t listen to her husband’s post-match comments as he said that he “loves clean sheets more than my wife” after the match. Remarks such as this would see most husbands spending a few nights on the sofa.
Someone’s due a hiding – Things feel to be coming together for Huddersfield Town at the moment but so far our 3-0 win against Wimbledon is the most emphatic win in the league. I have a feeling that we’ll soon have a game where it all clicks into place and we blow a team off the park. The game against Plymouth could easily have been a four or five goal win for Town and it feels like a matter of time before we can put away our chances and really put a team to the sword.
A few points.
When Derensili Sanches Fernandes signed I looked at his past exploits on YouTube and my first comment to a friend was that he looks too good for us and basically he is. To hang on to him in January we have to pay him more and also we have to get promoted or he’s gone in the summer.
Joe Taylor is getting in the right positions but not scoring at the moment. I think the problem is that he is so confident in scoring that his execution is too casual. His demeanour after missing shows it all, how he can’t believe he missed and he falls apart for a period until he realises he’s still in a game. Previously this used to last the rest of the game but it’s now just a few seconds, so he has improved a lot.
When Town get it together as they did in long periods of Saturdays match, they look like a Championship side playing lower league opposition, like a cup match. If they can keep this up we should be fine for at least the top two.
Finally, there are a lot of players injured and I don’t see how the likes of Ledson, Sorenson, Balker and Kasumu can get back in the team unless it’s to replace an injury or rotation. Nobody deserves to be dropped.
A more than competent performance, all the more surprising given that two of the first-choice centre backs were injured. Reverting to a back four unquestionably helped but more so the all-round efforts of those in front of them, especially Humphreys and Collins, consequently they, the last line, were not tested as thoroughly as they might otherwise have been. Although there was sustained pressure in the latter stages of the game the reaction to it was not as abject as the previous Saturday.
Congratulations TS on the 100% accuracy of your predicted formation and personnel.
The apparently depleted mid-field and defence have opened up a whole new set of possibilities and options.
DSF was again outstanding benefitting from seemingly his freedom to roam and his tenacity, Taylor must wonder how he failed to score but at least he set up the first goal and never gave up.
Mamba was not quite his usual self, registering an assist to complement last fortnight’s goal, yet another example of the transferred players return syndrome.
I know how much you like stats TS so it will be no surprise to you that Town lead League 1 big chances missed with 30 and Plymouth are a far away second with 19. However, the stats also shows our creative strength as we also lead the league in big chances created with 38.
At last a clean sheet!
Could that have something to do with the fact Drury didn’t make any substitutions in defence? Its difficult to understand why managers do late substitutions – presumably to disrupt the flow of the game if they are trying to hold on to a lead.
Peterborough may not adopt ‘ a low block’ – according to new manager Robbie Savage – he wants his young players to run and run and press and press – they wasted as many chances as Town – and have employed a new ‘attacking coach’ to get a higher conversion rate.
So there may be multiple chances to score – but will the chances be taken? .Hopefully the defence can keep up the good work against fit young players enthused by an inspiring new manager