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 minutes, which takes some doing, when you consider that’s fewer than one a minute and Blackburn managed 520 in the same timescale.
The 80/20 split of possession is pretty eye-catching but the fact that Blackburn completed eight times more passes than we did is even more outrageous in a game where the points were shared and our opponents were losing right until the 90th minute.
These stats about the other team dominating possession so much aren’t, in themselves, too much to worry about. If we’re doing the same next August then it’s maybe a slight concern but given our current situation and the fact we know we’ve got a limited squad and are in a tricky situation, Neil Warnock has set us up in just the right way to get results. Let the other team have the ball and let them try to play pretty football, we’ll soak it all up then nip up the other end and score. So far it’s not working too badly for us either.
Town seem to have saved all their luck up for the end of the season
It felt like Town had some rotten luck earlier in the season, where the ball never seemed to drop right for us in the box and every mistake we made at the other end seemed to be punished. But at the moment it feels like we’re cashing in some of our credit at the luck bank, if such a thing exists. We were being comprehensively outplayed by Blackburn in the early stages of the first half and couldn’t get the ball out of our own half. And then when we finally managed to launch a counter-attack, we scored with our first shot. Then we get another with our second attempt on goal.
I’m being a bit flippant when I say it’s good luck though, because it goes a bit deeper than just being good luck. Things tend to go your way when you open yourself up to the possibility of good things happening. So Warnock picking a positive lineup, by dropping a defensive minded player like Edmonds-Green for an attacker like Hungbo, meant that we can someone to carry the ball up the field and put the ball in the right area for Rudoni to finish our second. Similarly, Rudoni was making that near post run because we were committing numbers forward when we attacked rather than just keeping everyone behind the ball to hang on to the single-goal lead. So while fortune always has a hand in these things, you increase your chances by being positive.
Vaclik deserved his man of the match but I still have my doubts
There were some excellent saves from Vaclik in this match and I think it’s fairly likely we’d have lost this game if we’d have had a less experienced keeper in the team. He showed that can make decent reaction saves and spring about on his goal line to get to where the ball is going. But, as I’ve said above, I have my doubts about him. I don’t think it’s a particularly fresh observation but he looks like his legs are held together with pritt stick and sticky tape. He moves around incredibly awkwardly and my impression is that he’s very reluctant to come off his line if he can at all avoid it.
I try not to comment too much on goalkeeping because it’s a very specialist area and I’m far from an expert. With that said, I’m not keen on Vaclik’s tendency to punch everything that comes his way. The majority of the time he gets a decent connection and manages to get the ball to safety but most games he’ll punch at least one or two balls that are easily catchable and we lose the chance to get the ball back.
You can’t doubt Vacklik’s pedigree in the game, he’s played at a very high level and has the medals to prove it. But I think he’s physically past his best and I worry that he’s not able to get down to low balls quickly enough, in the same way it takes me longer to bend down to pick up the remote now I’m getting a bit older.
I’ve felt this way about Vaclik for a while, but it feels better to make these criticisms after a good performance as it’s less like kicking him when he’s down. He’s still a decent keeper but I’m not as convinced by him others seen to be. Yes, he did well in this game but I think there are issues with his game that mean Nicholls should still walk straight back in when he’s fully recovered from injury.
Matty Pearson takes man-marking to new levels
One of my favourite moments of the game came in the first half when the Blackburn players came to the side of the pitch for a drink during a break in play and I noticed there was a blue and white shirt among the Rovers players. Despite the play stopping, Matty Pearson had stuck to his task and continued to man mark Ben Brereton-Diaz. The Rovers players complained and tried to shove him out of the way but he just stood his ground like he wasn’t doing anything wrong. I don’t know if this was mind games or him having a bit of a laugh but I suspect it might have been the latter.
Either way, Pearson did a pretty good job of keeping the Chilean international underwraps when the ball was in play too. It was only when Brereton-Diaz dropped very deep that he ever got any significant time on the ball to dribble freely. Blackburn’s movement off the ball was tricky for Town’s defence to keep up with at times but I was impressed with Pearson’s dedication to his task.
I find the man marking system that Neil Warnock prefers a bit strange to watch. It used to be the norm but is now very rare as most teams use a zonal marking system. Marcelo Bielsa used it at Leeds and Carlos implemented it at Town before ditching it when it continued to lead to soft goals being conceded. For now, it seems to be working for Town and while our defence often looks to be getting pulled into awkward positions as defenders get pulled around as they track their man, it’s rare there’s an easy chance given away provided everyone is sticking to their man.
Are Town two wins from safety?
The other results in the Championship fell quite kindly for us on Monday, so the point against Blackburn slightly improved our position over our relegation rivals or meant we held our ground.
With five games to go, I would have thought that two wins would be enough to see Town safe. It would put us on 49 points, which is usually a decent enough points tally in the Championship and there are now three teams between us and the final relegation spot so I suspect at least one of those are going to struggle to put a decent run of form together between now and the end of the season.
It would be lovely if Town could keep their unbeaten run going by winning their next two games and give us a nice, stress-free end to the season where we finish comfortably above the relegation dog fight. But that doesn’t feel like the way we do things at Huddersfield Town, so I expect we’ll be going into the final game against Reading needing something.
Town will definitely put us through the nerve shedding grinder and it will go down to the wire with a positive result hopefully. It’s called being a Town fan.
You’ve covered the ground as ever, TS. It was as one-sided a match as one could wish to see. If I were a Blackburn supporter, I’d be scratching my head as to how my team had failed to secure 3 points.
So in the light, it was a fortunate point for Town and one that might prove to be critical.
I haven’t done the inevitable “if that team wins that match, and that team draws that match, etc” but my feeling is like yours – 2 more wins might be enough, particularly if they’re against relegation rivals Cardiff and Reading.
Worst last day of the season? Has to be 2001 I think. I’d driven up from London where I then lived to watch Town v Birmingham. Loads of other London-based supporters of Crystal Palace were also travelling north on the M1 bound for somewhere like Stockport. Birmingham City were already promoted. Town just had to match the Palace result to stay up and relegate Palace. Town lost 2-1. Palace were losing 1-0 until the dying seconds when they equalised. The atmosphere was awful. The long journey home down the M1 and encountering jubilant Palace fans at service stations, seeing their distinctive red & blue scarves hanging out of car windows, well let’s just say it was character building. I don’t ever want to experience something like that again.
I have always felt that sitting eep and foregoing possession for long periods is a dangerous game to play, and still think so. It only needs one mistake or loss of concentration and we concede a goal. Fotheringham did it and we dropped points by conceding late goals at Hull and Blackpool. Without those 4 dropped points we would be far more comfortable now.
I think NW has done a fantastic job and has given us hope, let’s hope he completes the job.
Although the man of the match award for Vaclik could be justified, I was concerned about his distribution and in particular on two occasions, only a few minutes apart, he managed to put the ball directly into touch from a goal kick, contributing to the record of lowest successful passes and miserable possession stats. That second half was not exactly joyful and the inevitable happened. Conversely, had their not been a leniently punished professional foul with Koroma breaking clear, about 2 minutes after the second goal, a 3-0 lead could have led to different outcome.
I have never rated Vaclik and still don’t. There must have been a reason why we got him at such short notice. He obviously wasn’t wanted by anyone else. I have also noticed that he has difficulty with his legs. When getting up from a save with the ball in his hands he hardly makes it to his feet. It looks like he could do with something to push himself up with like the rest of us old codgers. Sure he saved a few but so could Schofield. There is more to being a goalkeeper than shot stopping. He has no creativity. He never throws the ball out to start an attack just gives the ball some wellie for Danny Ward to fail to get. He hardly ever holds on to the ball either from crosses or shots, just punches. By pushing the ball towards an opponent on Saturday he gave a goal away. He wasn’t very good either in staying on his feet when 1 to 1 to prevent the first goal. Warnock said he was disappointed with him in the previous match. So it all boils down to what we all want, which is to get Nichols back and quickly.