The stats don’t tell the full story – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s defeat to Bromley

Huddersfield Town lost their first match of the season on Saturday when they fell to a 2-1 defeat to Bromley, a defeat made worse by the winning goal coming, inevitably, from ex-player Mickel Miller. The result leaves Town still in a respectable league position (fourth and only three points off the top) but our form is a concern with only two points coming from the last nine available against a trio of average-to-poor opponents.

It’s common to say that international breaks are unwelcome after a defeat as teams want a chance to get back to winning ways but I think the international break has come at the right time for Town. As we looks like a team that needs time to regroup, recharge and spend more time on the training pitch, working on the vulnerabilities this last few weeks have exposed.

On a personal level, I feel quite happy to have a couple of weeks without Town games too, as my early-season optimism has been dented by three consecutive disappointing Saturdays. Hopefully a break will help me refresh my enthusiasm as well as the players.

Here are some of my thoughts on this game…

Bromley opening goal revealed our soft underbelly

It was disappointing to go behind early in this game but the manner of the goal made it worse. When Bromley trotted forward for the set piece it looked like The Land of the Giants, as players like Marcus Harness were paired up with ginormous Bromley players. This may be because we’re playing a somewhat zonal system where our biggest players protect a space rather than defend against a player (though typically it is players, not spaces that score goals).

As it happened, Bromley’s goal didn’t come from one of these defensive mis-matches but Murray Wallace being beaten for the ball. Though Wallace’s slightly slow reaction to the ball was only an issue because Matty Young made a very uncertain attempt to claim the cross. Had he made a purposeful and confident stride towards the ball then he’d either have got something on it or been fouled in the process and received a free kick.

This is not the first time Matty Young has looked weak at commanding his area and it’s cost us a goal. It does make sense that a young and inexperienced keeper would find the ugly bits of the game tricky. But he can expect a lot more crosses to be dropped on top of him in our upcoming games as other teams’ scouts will now be well aware of how to exploit this weakness. 

Martin Drury talked about needing to protect the keeper better in these moments when talking to Radio Leeds after the game. I’m not sure I agree that anyone but Young was to blame for this situation and over the next couple of weeks, I’d hope that we’re going to coach him extensively on how to assert yourself in the six yard box. And the next time a ball is dropped into his six yard box he needs to come off his line with the intention of clearing the ball and any player in his way, including Town players. Otherwise we’ll keep conceding goals like this.

Town scored one but could have easily had five

There were 18 shots from Town in this game, eight of which were on target but if you put aside the stats and just consider the key moments in this game, we should really have put away some of our chances. 

Bali Mumba put a chance on a plate for Marcus Harness to hit straight at the keeper rather than the half an open goal in front of him. Mumba himself received a similar gilt-edged chance from a Joe Taylor square ball that he inexplicably took a touch of rather than smashing into the goal. Then, to complete this chain of supplier then turning into squanderer of chances, Joe Taylor had two brilliant chances to score, the first a flick on a dropping ball that a good connection would have certainly led to a goal but Taylor scuffed it and fell on his bottom. The second of Taylor’s major chances came when he nicked the ball in his own half and broke clear through on goal. The kind of goal he scored a lot at Wigan last season but couldn’t quite work out what to do on this occasion and the chance went begging.

It’s natural that teams don’t finish all their chances, otherwise football games would have scorelines like basketball but I’d say that all four of the chances I detailed above were more-likely-to-score-than-miss opportunities and failing to finish any of them is really wasteful. 

On a more positive note, Ashley Fletcher finally opened his Huddersfield Town account with a deft header on a wonderful Cameron Humphreys free kick. The slightest touch was all that was needed for the ball to fly past their keeper and draw us level.

Of course Mickel Miller scored the winner

Spite can be an incredible motivator and I think that Miller’s excellent run and shot for their winning goal was at least partially powered through a desire for Miller to get revenge against his former employer. I don’t have any animosity towards Miller, as his failures at Town were purely down to his body’s inability to stay fit. Otherwise, he’s a very handy player and I’m surprised there wasn’t a better team than Bromley willing to take a chance on him. 

Now I’ve credited Miller for scoring the goal, I have to say this was a horror show if you were watching with blue and white tinted spectacles. Samson Tovide, making his debut from the bench, made a truly dreadful pass, straight to a Bromley player. It was such a bad pass that it was impossible to know what the intention was, given there were no Town players anywhere near and he just lashed away at the ball. 

But it wouldn’t be fair to blame only Tovide, as we could have rectified the situation if any of his colleagues had been more alive to the danger. Wallace nearly closed Miller down but slipped at precisely the wrong time (defenders slipping at crucial moments is another frequent occurrence this season) and Bronkhorst, Bowat and Balker stood off Miller to allow the shooting opportunity rather than putting pressure on the ball. 

Stats v eye test

Martin Drury was quite feisty in his post-match comments when challenged about how well Town played in this game. He told Oggy that he thought Town were completely dominant throughout the game and the only major problem in the game was our inability to finish chances. Having watched the game, I can’t say that was the feeling that I came away with.

There are games that you lose which feel like you’ve hammered the team but still somehow lost, this game didn’t feel like that at all. I’ve already talked about how we managed to create some excellent chances and should have scored more but the general flow of the game was nothing like as dominant for Town as the stats suggest.

Drury backed up his defence of Town’s performance by citing the number of touches we had in their box and our xG score but those stats don’t tell the story of how we failed to impose ourselves on this game for long spells. We had good bits of the game but far too much of the game was played on Bromley’s terms and we struggled to really dictate the way the game was  played.

Town looked laboured when they were on the ball, we struggled against the physical challenge Bromley presented and didn’t control the game in midfield at all. Maybe on another day we’d have dealt with their very few good moments better and we might have finished our chances more clinically but even if we had won this game I would have felt like we’d played poorly against a team that was obviously less talented than our own.

Town have failed the same test three times in a row now

The draws against Notts County and Mansfield and this defeat all felt like relatively similar challenges for Town. Physical opponents that are happy to sit back and defend when we have the ball. On each occasion, we’ve come up short. 

I wouldn’t be so concerned about these last few games if it was rare to come up against teams that like a physical battle and keep a disciplined shape at the back but we’ll face this test over and over again this season. Martin Drury’s success or failure at Town will be decided, at least to some extent, by how well he picks up points against the league’s less fancied but difficult to break down teams. Every point we drop in these sorts of games puts pressure on us getting results against teams like Luton, Leicester and Sheffield Wednesday. 

Obviously, Drury isn’t wrong when he says that we need to be better at finishing our chances but I worry that he’s not seeing the bigger picture of our all-round game still not being consistent enough. Against teams that like to have the ball, we look like a very effective counter attacking team but when teams are back and set we don’t currently have the tools to unlock defences.

Dropping Fernandes was a mistake

There could be reasons we don’t know that explain why Fernandes was benched for this game but it now looks like a poor decision. I think Drury made the switch because he wanted Mumba and Bronkhorst to play as wingbacks and Harness to be a floating attacking player behind the front two of Fletcher and Taylor. This feels like overthinking though, as Fernandes has been our most creative player over the first few games of the season and arguably our best player aside from Joe Taylor.

Tactics and systems are important in games but I’m not sure they matter as much as getting your best players to play in areas of the pitch where they’re most effective. Given how this game worked out, I hope we go back to Fernandes starting on the right wing, even if it requires adjusting the selection and position of players elsewhere on the pitch. 

I’ve felt that Drury has typically been good with his team selection and use of substitutes but I think he got the Fernandes choice wrong here and he made another error when he subbed Fletcher for Tovide. Firstly, we needed a goal, so swapping a defender or midfielder for an attacker would have been a more positive move but more importantly, Fletcher was playing pretty well and Samson Tovide didn’t look even close to competing at this level of football. Hopefully it was just rustiness after being a free agent during the summer and missing a proper preseason but based on Saturday’s evidence, he’s a long way off the pace. Drury sees these players in training all week, so should have known the downgrade he was making in taking off Fletcher. 

AOB

What is that bandage on Joe Taylor’s leg? Please let me know in the comments if you know why Joe Taylor has a bit of material tied just under his right knee. I’ve noticed it in at least two games (but it might have been there a lot longer) and can’t work it out. It seems too small to be a bandage on a wound and his socks are so low it can’t be to help keep them up. It’s not a big deal but it’s left me curious.

Drury’s interviews are much better on Radio Leeds. The club’s in-house media team generally do a good job but their post-match interviews are more like a bubble bath than a grilling and are barely worth listening to. Radio Leeds interviews with Paul Ogden are far more interesting and after this game there were some exchanges that were bordering on prickly, with Drury disputing Oggy’s gentle challenges. Here’s a link to the interview if you want to listen.

Radulovic’s injury leaves us short of strikers – I don’t know what the recovery time is for back spasms but hopefully the international break will be enough for Bojan to recover. Without him, we’re looking very thin in the striking department. I’ve already spoken about how Samson Tovide looks undercooked currently, which leaves us just Fletcher and Taylor as viable options. And Fletcher hasn’t yet completed 90 minutes this season (the most was 75 against MK Dons but usually it’s 60-ish minutes if he starts). This feels like a problem of our own making, with May, Charles and Sebine all out on loan despite all three being obviously better options than Tovide.

Well done Joe Taylor – As I’ve been typing this, the club have revealed that Joe Taylor has received his first Wales international call up. It’s well deserved after a good start to the season, which follows on from his prolific loan spell at Wigan. Honestly, it doesn’t say a lot about the talent pool the Wales team are picking from if League One players are in contention but I’m pleased for him nonetheless.