The glass IS half full – A positive season preview for Huddersfield Town

As has become a tradition on this blog, I’m dividing my Huddersfield Town season preview into two halves, one dwelling on the negatives and another talking up the positives. It’s always impossible to know before a season starts which way things are going to go, so I find splitting myself in two and pouring all my hopes into one article and fears into another makes it easier to write these things. Typically, the pessimistic article is both easier to write and gets around double the clicks from Town fans too. This season might be a bit different though, as personally, I’m not feeling the usual creeping dread about the coming season, instead I’ve an unusual and unfamiliar feeling, which I think might be a vague sense of optimsim. It’s the hope that kills you, as the saying goes!

So, here’s my optimistic preview of Huddersfield Town’s upcoming season in League One. I’ll publish the pessimistic version in a little while. 

We’ve had an excellent preseason

Huddersfield Town really couldn’t have had a much better preseason than they have had under Michael Duff. They’ve started off brushing aside non-league teams to build confidence, testing themselves against a tougher opponent from the league below and still coming out on top then going off to Austria where they played teams that are all of better quality and winning two and losing one of those three games. They capped it off with a draw over Sheffield United where they fought well and played some decent stuff in the first half before getting leggy in the second half but still hung on for a draw despite being comprehensively outplayed by a team only just relegated from the Premier League.

The results from preseason are somewhat positive but the performances have been the bigger bonus, with Duff implementing his new system (which I’ll talk about more below) and getting to know his squad more. Most importantly, he’s also worked the team hard with many double training session days and plenty of team bonding to set them up for the season ahead. 

The early games in preseason saw Town looking a bit loose in the way they played and there were huge gaps and players often looking a bit uncertain. By the time they were playing Sheffield United everyone knew their role and each others’ in the 3-5-2 system and we seemed like a cohesive unit. 

The squad are fully fit and raring to go

I mentioned the double training sessions above and the emphasis Duff often puts on hard work and “sweat on the shirt” in his interviews shows that he’s keen to make sure we’re not going to be outworked by anyone else in the league. You can’t really tell how effective a preseason has been until the proper games start but my impression is that the players have been worked hard and that should set them up well for the season to come. 

Even in the friendly games, the tempo has seemed higher than typical friendlies and Town have spent long spells pressing opponents high up the pitch and running hard to force mistakes from their opponents. Given we’ve played this way against opponents from higher leagues with better technical skills than typical League One players, I can imagine that this approach should be pretty effective against most League One teams who will struggle if we are fit enough to keep chasing them all over the park for 90 minutes. 

Town enjoyed their best spell last season when Jon Worthington implemented a breathless pressing style where the players ran relentlessly. It got positive results but we weren’t fit enought to stick with that approach consistently, hopefully this season will be different.

Michael Duff has a system that should work well for League One

I’ve watched most of the games Town have played in preseason and I really like the way Michael Duff has got us playing. I think he understands the likely challenges Town will face in many games this coming season and has set up a system that should be flexible enough to overcome many of them. 

The 3-5-2 system will prioritise controlling games, using the wingbacks to create width and then cutting balls back into the box where there should be many players lined up to latch on to the balls they cut in. That’s been a typical pattern of play that has resulted in goals for Town in preseason and also what they practice doing in training too. 

In the most recent friendlies, Town have been up against more skilled teams and have had to play a more restrained approach but I think when Town come up against the weaker League One teams they’ll play more like they did in the Emley, Guiseley and Harrogate, where the players are given a lot of licence to attack regardless of their official position on the pitch. This will be useful in those games where we’re up against a team that wants to sit in and defend. 

If the situation warrants a more gung-ho approach, the wider central defenders can be played more like either additional central midfielders who step up when we have the ball, or additional wingbacks, making supporting runs for the proper wide player. The central midfielders also start to get really far forward, often overlapping the strikers so much they’re more like strikers themselves and the wingbacks drift in to the box from the opposite side when the other wide man comes forward, meaning we’ve got latge numbers of players coming forward when we attack. 

Throwing players forward like this is risky, and we often looked vulnerable on the break when we played so aggressively in preseason but we created a lot of chances going forward too. So the job will be to try and take enough risks to create the chances we need to score without leaving our own back door open. Still, having a memory of how many times we struggled to break down defensive teams last time we played in League One, I’m pleased to see that Michael Duff seems to have a system that can be adapted to throw the kitchen sink at the opposition if we’ve not made a breakthrough.

There is, of course, a much more conservative version of the 3-5-2 system that Duff has used the latter half of the preseason games where the overlapping and bombing forward is reined back in favour of keeping to a structure. When we play the likes of Bolton and Birmingham we’ll no doubt see this kind of approach, which saw us able to get decent results and hold our own against Sheffield United, Hertha Berlin and Lecce (albeit in meaningless friendlies).  

The signings we’ve made so far strengthen us in exactly the right ways

While I’ll moan in my next article about how Town haven’t been busy enough in the transfer market, I will say that the players we have brought in have been just right for what we need. Rather than speculative punts, we’ve signed players in the prime of their careers, with experience of this level and who have done well in recent seasons. Not only that, the four signings have solved the two biggest problems we had at the start of the transfer window. 

With Michael Duff obviously wanting to play three and the back with wingbacks, having specialist wingbacks was essential and the options we had within the squad all involved a compromise between either a full back who struggles a bit going forward, a winger who can’t defend or someone who just isn’t good enough. Miller and Sorensen are both proven League One wingbacks, and Sorensen is arguably the best right-sided wingback in the league.

Kane and Evans solve Town’s other huge problem, which has plagued our squad for many seasons: midfielders that can pass a ball. Both can read the game, see a pass and execute it. Not only that, both of them have an eye for an outside-of-the-box screamer or two as well, so we should see a few goals coming from this pair if we play our cards right (I mentioned above how our patterns of play often involve setting up for cutbacks from wide areas, which will suit these two nicely).

I’ve got bored of banging on about Town’s need for midfield creativity, so having two players brought in who answer this need is perfect. Aaron Mooy was the last player that filled this role properly but I think having Kane and Evans on the pitch will hark back to an even earlier time for Town fans with a good memory, having two technically proficient midfielders on the pitch at the same time reminds me more of when Norwood and Clayton both played together in Town’s midfield. I’m excited to see what this new pairing are capable of. So far they both seem to be excellent readers of the game and have the ability to pick out a pass. Neither is particularly quick but they can get the ball to do the work for them. 

There are more signings to come

We’ve been here before in previous transfer windows, but I genuinely think that there will be more business done by Town before the transfer window shuts and we’ll see some of our most glaring issues with the squad resolved. I think the board will be accutely aware of how badly the last summer’s transfer window went and how the failure to recruit the right players was probably one of the largest contributors to our relegation. Given the number of games we started with two wingers up front and no striker, I think that signing an average Championship-quality striker last August would probably have been enough to keep us up. 

It would be awful to get to the emf of this season and be thinking “what if” again about transfers we didn’t get this summer. The board will know that too. They will also be smarting from the Alfie May transfer saga which saw Birmingham gazump us at the last minute with an astronomical wage offer, so will no doubt want to make sure losing out on that player isn’t a defining story of this season.

Jake Edwards confirmed to Radio Leeds on Tuesday night that the club are in dialogue with Premier League clubs at the moment about loans coming in. So it’s likely we’ll see some activity but it may not be for a little while as Premier League clubs tend to only let youngsters go once they know they’ve got the players they need on their books. 

The club feels to be getting it right off the field

After previous Town relegations, it’s felt like everything has been in freefall off the pitch. Everything gets a bit sloppier, people lose their jobs, there’s a gloom around the place and we trudge into a season in the division below. This relegation is probably the most positive one I’ve ever experienced at Town. That has a lot to do with how the people behind the scenes have responded.

Starting from Kevin Nagle at the top and going all the way down, everyone has remained very chipper since relegation and there’s a positivity about the place. I think there were already plans in place to make a lot of changes at Town this summer anyway, but all the rebranding and improvements at the stadium have helped to make it feel like a fresh start. Bringing in Michael Duff quickly also helped to draw a line under last season and start a new era (even if the original plan was to keep Breitenreiter around – in retrospect, I’m pleased he didn’t feel up to fighting it out in the English third tier as I think Duff is better equipped to get us out of this league).

Obviously, jet washing the stadium trusses and giving the toilets a lick of paint isn’t exactly going to help Town get any more points this season but it does give more a sense of pride about the place. And renovating the changing rooms does have a material difference on the sense of pride the players can have about their job as it shows their in a proper stadium and working at a club that values it’s players. The old changing rooms looked like the ones I got changed in for PE in the nineties.

There are going to be over 14,000 Town fans at every home game

Staying with the stadium, if Town play well this season it will be absolutely rocking with more than 14,000 season tickets sold so far. That’s more that we sold last season despite us now being in the league below and the prices remaining the same. While the club have been generous in keeping season card prices low, the fans have repaid that faith by taking up the offer in great numbers. In fact, if the rumoured price hikes and messy tiered pricing system had been implemented I suspect the drop in numbers would have led to a net drop in revenue before you consider the lost sales at the concessions on matchdays and the reduced atmosphere if thousands of fans hadn’t renewed. 

Town aren’t the biggest team in League One but we are among them, so having this kind of home support will make a difference in home games. In the Championship our attendances are normal, or maybe even slightly below average but in League One we’ll be among the best attended clubs and that will potentially give us an edge in some matches where away teams may feel the pressure if the atmosphere can really get going. Our stadium isn’t famous for being a cauldron of noise but when the conditions are right and the fans are up for it, there have been times when the crowd have been able to make a big difference in games. I’m thinking back to the Manchester United win at home in the Premier League or any of the home playoff games we’ve had at the stadium. It can happen if everyone gets behind the team.

League One won’t be easy but it won’t be as hard as the Championship either

In the Championship, it’s a very competitive league where any team can beat anyone else on any given day. While League One isn’t a cake walk, it’s not the same as the Championship, there are strong teams in League One and then there are, quite frankly, ones that are a bit rubbish. So while we’ll most likely have some very tricky games this season, we’ll also have some games were the opposition will not be very good. This will present its own challenge, as these weaker teams will no doubt be solid and organised which means Town will have to try to break them down. 

But at least we should have the novelty of being one of the big boys this season. After years and years of going into most games as the underdog, we can expect Town to dominate possession more often than not and perhaps play a bit of football. That seems to be the thinking about the changes in tactics Michael Duff has made and the signings we’ve made. I expect us to try and control games and carve open teams that try and sit deep against us. The opposite of what we’ve been used to in recent seasons, which will be a welcome change. 

I don’t expect Town to have it all their own way or to be guaranteed promotion at their first attempt but I do expect that we should win more than we lose this season. Aside from the two freak seasons where we made the playoffs in the Championship under Wagner and Corberan, we’ve been fighting relegation every season for over a decade. Even if we fall short of the target of bouncing straight back to the Championship, it will still be nice to finish a season where we’ve scored more than we’ve conceded, won more that we’ve lost, dominated more than been dominated and generally played better football. While you can’t guarantee any of this before a ball has been kicked, something will have gone badly wrong if we don’t achieve this relatively modest goal. And if things really click into place, who knows how far we could go.