Thoughts on Kamberi, Lowton, Luton, HTSA questions, loan recalls & January transfer window

Rather than try and rush out five blogposts on various different Town-related topics in one day, I thought I’d do a quick roundup article to cover off all the relevant goings on that occurred this week for Town. It’s been a pretty busy week, with the aftermath of the Luton game to pick over, two new arrivals, the supporters’ association publicly demanding a meeting with the club and plenty of transfer rumours and plenty of loan recalls. 

Here are my thoughts on the latest Huddersfield Town goings on, in no particular order…

Looking back on Luton

I’m way too late to get too deep into the Luton game last Sunday and I think the bones have already been picked over that game. Here are my bullet point thoughts on the game:

• Luton had more cutting edge in the final third and that made the difference
• Hogg going off meant we lost our organising force in the middle (even though I didn’t think he was playing that well as an individual)
• Thomas is in shocking form at the moment but shouldn’t be written off
• Rudoni looks so much better as an attacking midfielder than a defensive midfielder
• Even when we play well, we still don’t create enough chances from open play
• It was a fairly decent performance anyway and a draw would have reflected the balance of play in my opinion

Matt Lowton – the kind of boring signing that often thrives at Town

If you told me that your pulse quickened when you saw that Town had signed Burnley’s 30+ right back on loan, who has barely kicked a ball this season, then I’d say you were a liar. This is just not a signing that gets fans hot under the collar. But he’s a solid pro, who has spent most of his career in the Premier League and is incredibly highly thought of by his parent club and their fans. 

I have a feeling that this signing was most likely lined up well before Kaine Kesley-Hayden’s recent upturn in form. The fact the VIlla loanee has started to turn in high-quality performances lately may give Fotheringham some tricky choices to make at right back. Unless there’s an expectation that Villa will recall their youngster and Lowton has been brought in to replace him, not the injured Turton. We’ll have to see.

Regardless of the manoeuvrings behind the scenes, I’m quite pleased with this signing. He’ll be a steady and reliable addition to the back line and adds a bit of quality and experience to the dressing room, which is a relief when we so often have to rely on youth players to fill in gaps.

Florian Kamberi – a lot to prove but he’s set up to succeed

I’m keeping my mind open about Kamberi but the comments from other teams’ fans don’t make pretty reading. Sheffield Wednesday fans, although they aren’t typically the brightest bunch, are particularly scathing of him. His career stats aren’t anything to write home about either, never really scoring with any regularity apart from a purple patch at Hibs where he scored something like 9 in 14 games many years ago. But since then it’s been a goals-to-games ratio of closer to 1 in 4 despite playing in leagues that aren’t as competitive as the Championship. 

So Kamberi has not got the kind of pedigree that makes me instantly think he’ll be a success at Huddersfield Town. But he has got one thing going for him. He’s been at the club since the World Cup break started in November and trained alongside the rest of the team. This means a few things. Firstly, surely he has to be an improvement on what we have because the coaches have been able to compare him directly to our other strikers up close for a number of months now. Why sign him if he’s no better than the players already on the books? Secondly, he shouldn’t need any adjustment period or settling in time, as he’s already been at the club for these past few months and should be firing on all cylinders.

I’ve no doubt in my mind that Kamberi represents a cheap option to the club and that’s why we’ve brought him in. But he should also add something too or it would be a complete waste of everyone’s time to have given him a contract. Having said that, I thought the same about Connor Mahoney, and he’s currently looking like a pointless signing so far, though there is still time for him to turn that around.

HTSA demand meeting with the club to get answers to burning questions

The Huddersfield Town Supporters Association have called for an At The Town Panel meeting (the liaison group between the club and fan representatives) to be held to answer six questions that they believe need to be answered. 

The issues around the ownership of the club seem to be murky at best right now and it’s been a while since there has been any official comment beyond “wait and see”. I can only reason that there are complicated and delicate legal wranglings going on behind the scenes but some clarity for fans would be reassuring as there’s a tendency to fill in the blanks with the worst possible outcome if we’re left to guess.

The other questions the HTSA ask are all similarly seeking reassurance for fans but on other pertinent issues like the stadium management, the threat of relegation and the long-term investment in the infrastructure of the stadium – which is looking increasingly shabby as time goes by despite being modern compared to most stadiums. 

I’m glad that these questions are being asked and I hope that the club engages in as open a dialogue as they possibly can. It’s likely that NDAs and legal positions will limit some of their ability to answer questions but the club have previously been pretty good at keeping fans informed of what is happening behind the scenes. Maybe we’ve been spoiled in the past and that’s why there’s rising frustration at the moment. Whatever the reason, I hope the club can see that there is frustration out there among many fans and it’s not just the usual angry mob on the fringes who are always moaning, there are a lot of fans feeling annoyed about these issues that the HTSA are raising and they could help themselves enormously by engaging with these questions in an open and frank manner.

Loan recalls – the January shuffle has begun

A spate of loan players have returned to Huddersfield this week from their loan postings. It wouldn’t stun me if a few more were to come back into the fold too before the end of the month. However, that doesn’t mean they’ll be turning out for the first team any time soon as we have a tendency to churn players over in January and ship them out somewhere else. 

Very few of our loanees have been raging successes out on loan so far this season, so I can’t really see a strong case for recalling any of them to fill in gaps in the first team. Headley at Harrogate has done well at left back, so he may be worth considering but with Jackson already in the first team, it seems pointless having two youngsters covering one position. 

Kyle Hudlin seems like a good option to have on the bench, given he is the tallest professional footballer in the UK, as we could chuck him on to cause chaos in the last few minutes of games. But he wasn’t able to break into the starting eleven of Wimbledon’s League One team, so why do we think he would be effective in the Championship? Much better to ship him out to a League Two team that will guarantee him game time.

If Town were 13th or 14th in the league and neither looked like going up or down then it might be fun to blood a load of youngsters in the second half of the season and start planning for the future. But we’re currently fighting for survival and we need to be able to field our strongest possible eleven every week. Inexperienced youngsters won’t thrive if they are having to take their first steps in that pressure cooker environment, particularly when they’re not up to the required standard.

The likes of Camara and Diarra have shown they have the talent to hack it at this level but even they have to be used sparingly and managed carefully. I don’t think we can risk having too many more young players in the first-team squad at the moment and dilute the experience in the group even further. I suspect this contradicts earlier things I’ve said about how optimistic I feel about our current crop of youngsters but as we head into the crunch time of the season I think it’s important we prioritise experienced heads and don’t gamble our Championship status on developing players that might not be ready to play at this level.

The January transfer window – set expectations to low

I think Town might do more business this window but I’m fairly pessimistic about the kind of signings we’re likely to be making. For example, I saw a rumour linking Lewis O’Brien with a loan move back to Town the other day. That’s bonkers. He most likely tripled his wages when he went to Forest, which puts him way out of our league. Not to mention the fact that, while he’s not starting many games, he’s still getting minutes off the bench for Forest. 

Bringing in a loan signing like O’Brien would be excellent business, as he could give us a huge lift and drag us out of relegation trouble. But we aren’t likely to be able to pay those kinds of wages and, being brutal, why would a player of that quality want to come and play in a relegation scrap in the Championship? It doesn’t make sense.

We’re not going to attract top-level players or pay top-level wages but that doesn’t mean that we can’t do some business in the bargain bins that could help us out of our current predicament. Whether it’s a Premier League youth player that might want to come on loan like Emile Smith-Rowe did during the Cowley’s time or if it’s an experienced pro that’s fallen down the pecking order, we need to sniff out the bargains that add something to our squad and make the difference between now and May.

Looking at things from the other perspective, we should probably expect some movement the other way too. It wouldn’t stun me if we saw one of Rhodes or Ward leave this window. Fotheringham as good as confirmed that Rhodes would be leaving a few weeks ago, but those few goals Rhodes has scored and his comments in the media about how much he loves the club make me wonder if Rhodes might stay. Ward is harder to judge though as he’s been off the boil for a while. Either striker might be tricky to move on though as they are both among our higher earners and would probably need to take a pay cut if they went to a club in a lower division. 

There’s also the possibility that the club’s precarious financial position may need bolstering with player sales. Sorba Thomas is probably the obvious choice if we were looking to cash in, as his chance creation stats for the last two seasons are incredible and he can be brilliant on his day (though also awful on a bad day). Players I’d be less keen to see leave would be the likes of Nicholls, who would be virtually impossible to replace with similar quality, and Camara, who is showing signs of being a top talent but doesn’t feel sufficiently developed enough yet to be ready for a big money move.