Huddersfield Town beat West Brom 2-1 last night, making them almost certain to retain their Championship status. It was a remarkable performance from Town, with every player contributing well and pulling together when it really counted.
Here are a few of my thoughts about the game:
Awful officials
One thing I’d like to get out of the way early is how bad the officials were last night. Chalobah was booked after 18 minutes for time wasting, which I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. I can understand the desire for the ref to speed up play but surely a quick word would have worked. Instead he left a defender one mistimed tackle away from red with 72 minutes still to play. It seemed petty, which summed up his general approach to the game.
The biggest two errors made by the officials came a little while after Chalobah’s booking. Firstly, the ref and linesman completely missed a blatant West Brom penalty when Stearman bundled over one of their players off the ball. We’re always quick to blame officials when it’s Town who lose out, but it looked like an obvious foul to me.
A few minutes later, the linesman missed a blatant triple offside from the freekick which produced the equaliser. The goalscorer was offside by about a foot but two other players were blocking Lössl’s view were even further offside.
Was the linesman trying to level things up for the earlier mistake? Only he will know but in these situations two wrongs don’t make a right. Had the game turned out differently then these moments would have attracted far more attention but I suppose we can all feel relieved that we still got the win.
VAR gets a lot of justified stick in the Premier League but at least it has stopped such flagrant mistakes from being allowed to influence games. On the whole. When it’s working.
For balance, I should point out that the ref played a really good advantage when O’Brien was fouled just before he put Emile Smith Rowe through on goal for the winner. Had he stopped play then our second goal wouldn’t have happened.
The right tactics for the opposition
When I saw the team news before the game it seemed to me like we were waving a white flag, swapping out attackers in favour of defensive midfielders. But it turned out to be the right selection for the opponents we faced.
Having King and Hogg sitting deep meant O’Brien played as an unconventional number 10. His relentless running meant that West Brom had less time to settle on the ball and disrupted their rhythm.
Willock and Bacuna also did their respective jobs well on the wings, providing relief to the defence when they burst forward. Coupled with O’Brien and Frazier Campbell’s industry, we were a nuisance to West Brom and it meant they could not commit too much going forward.
One thing I liked about this game was how we did to West Brom what Wigan and Luton did to us. Despite West Brom having 70% possession, Town controlled the game for long periods and soaked up pressure well for all the game, barring the spell before half time where West Brom had a lot of free kicks and built up some pressure.
The right subs
I thought it was worth highlighting the use of substitutes separately to the general tactics Town used because they changed the game in our favour. Danny Cowley has been criticised by some Town fans for his substitutes lately but last night, in my opinion, he got them spot on.
Mounié’s arrival gave us an outlet to release pressure because of his strength in the air. Smith Rowe and Grant coming on meant that we suddenly had more of a counter attacking threat, and Smith Rowe was able to hold possession better in the opposition half. It also meant O’Brien dropped back into midfield, providing a more energetic alternative to King’s steady but subdued presence.
Town were drawing at the point Mounié, Grant and Smith Rowe were introduced and had something to cling on to. Plenty of other managers would have avoided introducing additional attacking players at this stage and perhaps have packed midfield or defence to try and cling to the point. It’s to Cowley’s credit that he saw an opportunity to hurt West Brom on the break and took a risk.
Typical Town – doing it the hard way
They say that it’s the hope that kills you, and that’s been true of Town this season. Just at the point where you think they’re a lost cause they pull out a performance that gives you that bit of hope that things will be OK. We lost to Wigan and Luton but managed to pull off a win against a team on the verge of automatic promotion (though this is far less likely thanks to last night). That sums us up this year.
It’s hard to overstate how unlikely that performance was. We looked so jaded and bereft of ideas against Luton. Even the better showing against Sheffield Wednesday couldn’t produce a goal and we flagged towards the end. Somehow an extra gear was found last night and it was West Brom that looked like they were out of energy and ideas in the closing stages.
Could this be a turning point?
If I was going to pinpoint the start of Town’s downward spiral I would speculate it came after the 3-0 home defeat to Spurs in the first Premier League season. That was a long time ago, but we’ve been slipping ever since. Double relegation looked likely at the point the Cowleys took over but staying up could be the chance to turn the narrative around.
After a bad couple of seasons the priority now will be to draw a line under the negative experiences and try to build something new. There are still plenty of issues to sort out but I hope that the positive vibes around the club now can go some way to washing off the stench of relegation.
What next?
In the short term, we’ve got to watch this weekend’s games and make sure the ridiculously unlikely sequence of results doesn’t happen that could require more than 51 points to be safe. It’s almost certain already but I expect we’ll be able to shut up the pedants by five o’clock tonight when the results come in.
After that, we’ve got to go to Millwall on Wednesday and can enjoy playing with the pressure off. I expect Danny Cowley to field a relatively strong side, as he’s regularly talked in press conferences about preserving the integrity of the competition. Flooding the team with kids would be interesting but disrespectful to the other teams chasing playoff spots.
It will be nice to watch the game on Wednesday where the outcome is relatively unimportant to Town and just enjoy them playing.
After Wednesday the post-season starts and it will inevitably be a busy period for Town. Much of our current squad will be broken up by expiring contracts, returning loans and player sales (hopefully not, but everyone seems to accept Grant is off to better things).
Moving players on is likely to be harder than bringing them in, so I hope work has already begun on getting rid of the surplus players that are still under contract. Diakhaby hasn’t helped himself out on loan with Forest, Derby fans aren’t in love with Hamer and I’m not sure whether Mbenza has done anything much during his loan spell. I’ll write more in the next few days about the restructuring job that’s needed with Town’s squad but for now, I’m going to enjoy the warm feeling that survival brings.
Another excellent summary, spot on. I have been saying for a couple of years that our downturn started when we were equal to Spurs for 45 minutes and we were 3 down. Wagner was never the same and became very defensive, going 3 at the back. He then brought in wingers instead of wing backs. Being a season ticket holder living in Lincoln I have watched the progress of the Cowley’s closely and thought them to be a good appointment. I have not been disappointed.
It’s not just about the squad for next season. Give or take, the Cowley’s have managed 50 points out of 40 games. This is a poor return from a current squad capable of doing better in The Championship. The win against West Prom has not changed this basic fact. If an experienced Championship manager of the calibre of Nigel Pearson, Gary Rowett or Alex Neil became available Phil Hodgkinson should think hard about it.
And it came to pass that your prophecy was right and PH did think hard about it – though probably not with the manager you envisaged. Just hope that this isn’t a Jan Siewert rerun. It’s a lot harder to be the manager where the buck stops than just a coach.
When I talked about a restructuring job I was thinking about on the pitch. I can’t say I agree with what’s happened but now we’re here I’ll try to be positive and look on the bright side.