What is going wrong at Huddersfield Town? 7 areas where the club is failing

I was going to do a write up about the 3-0 capitulation to Burton Albion on Saturday but the performance was so bad that it defies analysis. Burton is famous for brewing huge quantities of beer and the only plausible explanation for Town’s performance would be them spending the morning getting sloshed in the nearby brewery. Only that doesn’t seem plausible, as someone at the club have had to organise a booze up at a brewery – which based on recent evidence we are incapable of doing even this.

Town were disgusting to watch, literally. I felt sickened by the half-hearted slop that the team collectively served up. If you have any doubts about how bad Town are right now, watch the second goal on the highlights below. 

Instead of trying to explain the inexplicable, I’m going to take a step back and look at all the things that are currently going wrong at Town. 

The players

Time and time again we’ve been fed excuses about the players. They play really well in training, they’re an honest bunch of lads, they get nervous in front of the home crowd, they’re damaged from previous seasons’ failures, the running stats are good, they’ve not trained enough or have trained too much. None of it rings true because it’s all waffle that managers say because they want to defend their players in the hope that loyalty will be repaid on the pitch. But it rarely is. 

Michael Duff repeatedly said that he thought we had a decent squad. On paper we do. Our wage bill suggests they should be. But on the pitch it hasn’t come together at all. 

I don’t want to single any individual players out for criticism here. Not because I don’t want to throw one or two under the bus but instead because they all deserve to be thrown under the bus. Maybe Callum Marshall, a loanee, deserves credit for always giving his best (though not always to much effect). Other than that, I can’t think of a single player that has lived up to expectations this season, never mind exceeding expectations. Mickel Miller would be another one that’s been good but sadly missed too much of the season due to injury. 

There are other factors that have led to so many players failing to produce but ultimately, the players need to look at themselves before pointing fingers elsewhere. The number of managers that have failed to get a tune out of these players means it’s impossible to not blame them first and foremost. 

The footballing philosophy 

What kind of football do Huddersfield Town play? I could have answered that question quite clearly with Wagner, Corberan or Warnock in charge but lately we seem a mess. Duff talked about playing mixed football but that is more an absence of a style rather than anything unique about how we play. 

We play a lot of long balls to strikers too small to do anything with it. We sometimes try to play out from the back without having enough defenders capable of this way of playing. We’ve still not replaced Aaron Mooy since he left nearly six years ago, so the midfield never has anyone capable of dictating the play. We built a squad with no wingers and then struggled for creativity. Hogg continues to get picked despite being a shadow of his former self, because the other options are all worse. The most consistent trait from the last four or five years has been a regular inability to connect simple passes over short distances. And giving strikers almost nothing to feed off. 

This stuff could be laid at the door of the various managers we’ve had in but it goes deeper than that. The “head coach” instead of manager thing should improve continuity. There should be a club style that starts in the academy and carries through to the first team. Then when a head coach gets sacked it’s less disruptive because you recruit someone with broadly the same approach and recruit players for that style. 

Instead we have the current mish-mash approach, where we lurch from one style to another like a shopping trolley with a wonky wheel. And we need a squad overhaul everytime we bring in a new head coach, to shit their approach. If you look at the names being linked with Town for the vacant head coach role, there’s no coherence to the names being bandied around. It’s not just pragmatists or just footballing purists. Because nobody knows what kind of guy we want next because we veer from one approach to another with each appointment. 

Team spirit and character

Do you remember the talk of a leadership group being brought in and a fresh start ahead of this season? That doesn’t get spoken about much any more because the team spirit is on the floor and there seems to be a vacuum where the leadership of this group should be. 

The way we’ve let our heads drop at the slightest set back this season has suggested the weak mentality that saw us relegated from the Championship has continued into this season regardless of the talk we’ve heard. I think Michael Duff was doing what he could to try and improve the individuals he had playing for him but the lack of player turnover last summer meant we were saddled with too many players with negative and weak mindsets. 

Fans are willing to forgive players that aren’t the best in terms of ability if they put everything in when they’re wearing a Town shirt. Andre Breitenreiter said at the end of last season that he believed a significant number of Town players didn’t care about the club at all. Based on Burton Albion away, I think this problem is still there. 

The mentality aspect of the game matters a great deal at this level too. Teams that succeed tend to have a collective spirit that propels them on through tricky moments. Our team create their own tricky moments and then implode at the first sign of adversity. While this observation is based mostly on gut feeling from what I’ve watched this season, it’s backed up by the lack of last-minute winners we’ve scored and the times we’ve crumbled when a minor setback occurs in a game. 

Connection with fans 

Winning teams tend to have a great connection with their fans regardless of any other factors but while Town aren’t succeeding on the pitch, everything else needs to be good to maintain a positive relationship. It currently is not. 

While the criticism aimed at Mark Cartwright from some fans often crosses the line, there are plenty more criticisms that are reasonable, measured and justified. Beyond requesting blind faith in someone that has consistently failed, there hasn’t been much said by anyone at the club on this front. While it’s possible that decisions have already been made but not publicised, the PR side of things from Town is dismal at the moment. The strategy seems to be to fingers in ears and hope it all blows over soon. (Since writing this, Kevin Nagle has released a video diary that hints at Cartwright’s departure but doesn’t confirm anything, possibly due to contracts and legal agreements.)

The injuries 

I don’t have any insight into the internal goings on at the club, so don’t know if the injuries we’ve sustained this season have been a result of bad luck, managers ignoring advice from the medical department or the medical department not giving the right advice. Regardless, the number of injuries we’ve had this season has been crazy. 

There apparently was a change in this area a few months ago, with some of the medical team let go. But how did we get to the stage where so many players had muscle injuries? Were we overplaying them? Under training them? Bringing them back from injury too soon? Signing players that are injury prone? Maybe a mix of all these things.

It’s also possible that character has a part to play in this area too. Are some players happy to sit out games injured and are others willing to keep minor knocks to themselves to keep their place and they develop into something worse?

It’s hard for me to get to the bottom of from the outside looking in. But I also don’t have a lot of faith that the club have a handle on what has gone on with the injuries. 

Off-the-pitch matters

While the football the first team play is the most important thing, the management of all the other stuff does have an impact on the feeling around the club too. The improvements to the stadium have been welcome and H Town seems like a decent addition to match day but a lot of other things off the pitch are not great. 

For all the talk about the stadium being brought under the club’s ownership, it’s still not been done. While I appreciate that these complicated sorts of deals take time, there has been years and years of tantalising promises that have yet to come to fruition. The club owning 100% of the stadium will be a positive step forward but we’ve been promised this for so long now and it still hasn’t happened.

The season card pricing debacle this last few weeks has been pretty dismal too. Regardless of whether you agree with the pricing or not, the fact the club had to announce several concessions and amendments to the original offer suggests they know it was bungled. Just a year after the previous season card announcement was scrapped and the cheaper tickets carried on for a further season. 

Then there are the gossipy things that leak out, like an executive inviting a fan to the car park to continue their exchange of views, gesticulating at Town fans and a Town fans’ comedy event being cancelled because of a cheeky discount code. Silly stuff really but the kind of thing that makes the club look amateurish. 

B Team not producing 

In the Championship we were told the academy was producing players only capable of League One or Two football. Now we’re down at that level the academy production line has ground to a halt. Tom Iorpenda is the only player close to getting in our first team. And Michael Duff was often quite scathing of his defensive abilities even when praising his attacking play. 

Struggling to integrate B Team players into the first team isn’t the reason Towns season seems certain to end in failure. But it is another area the club isn’t getting right. A good example would be the recent central defender injury crisis. Loick Ayina, a central defender, was sat on the bench or not even making the squad when we had four full backs across the back line and not a single central defender. How little faith must we have in our youngsters to cobble together such a makeshift backline? Had we decent youngsters coming through, at least a couple of this season’s injuries could have been chances for youngsters to impress rather than picking from the same stale group of wizened pros on the fringe of the squad. 

The club is in the process of switching back to a full academy system, so building up the younger age groups may have diverted attention and resources from the B Team. Regardless, it’s disappointing that we don’t have more players on the cusp or breaking into the first team. The fact Jon Worthington has included so fee youngsters during his spell as caretaker suggests that the quality isn’t there in the youth ranks, as surely the head of the academy would give them a go if they were good enough. 

How do you fix these problems at Huddersfield Town?

It’s much easier to point out the issues than it is to fix them but the obvious solution is to have a massive clear out and bring in new people with the qualities that the club is currently lacking. Nobody has faith in Mark Cartwright to do this job, so he should be the first person to be “relieved of his duties”. Judging by Kevin Nagle’s comments, that might have happened already barring the official announcement. 

Then the new sporting director needs to come in and hit the ground running. Given the summer transfer window is fast approaching and the new man will want to do things his way rather than continue the last guy’s plans, I think Mark Cartwright’s replacement should be someone already doing that job at this level. The Cartwright equivalents at the top end of League One or bottom end of the Championship will already have similar plans as Town for the summer and would have the best chance of being ready to jump straight into the job without too much of a bedding in period. Finding a standout candidate at that level who wants to leave might not be easy but it’s a vital appointment to get right. 

The player recruitment is the other thing that could have a huge impact on nearly all the issues I’ve mentioned above. Nagle spoke in his video diary of needing big, strong, athletic types in the coming transfer window. I’m not sure that will fix it, as it’s often more of a mental weakness rather than physical that costs us in games. Regardless the gaping holes in our squad suggest we need to either to fantastic business or pay big money to bring this squad up to scratch. 

I think the player exits will be another important area to manage. Getting rid of all of the players with expiring contracts seems likely at this stage. Even Hogg’s traditional 1-year contract extension has to be in doubt given the need for fresh leaders to emerge. 

Then there’s the job of appointing a new manager. Picking one that will play the club-approved style would be sensible (once we’ve worked that out). I’d also like us to stick with the next guy for a reasonable period of time too, as we’ve now got a reputation of getting through managers far too frequently.

If we can have a clear out and bring in new people that are a genuine improvement then there’s hope for the future. Which is desperately needed as the club feels to be rudderless and drifting at the moment. Desptie the fact we’re technically not out of the playoff race yet.