What’s going wrong with Huddersfield Town? 7 potential reasons

There’s something wrong at Huddersfield Town this season. We’ve lost our first three games, which wouldn’t be horrendous on its own but the manner of the defeats and the way the team have been playing during those games alongside events off the pitch all point towards some rising concerns among Town fans. 

So rather than a preview article for tomorrow’s game against Stoke I’m going to try and dig into the possible reasons why Huddersfield Town are so bad at the moment. To save you from disappointment before you get too far, I don’t have the answers, you won’t finish this article with a neat, 5-point plan about exactly how to fix Huddersfield Town’s problems. Instead, I’m going to go over all the things I can think of that might be contributing to the problems and consider how much of a factor they may be. 

There’s not usually a simple answer to what the problem is in these circumstances, instead there are dozens of factors that all combine to make a team that very recently was performing well above it’s expected levels now look like a bunch of amateurs. So, here are my thoughts about what could be contributing to the problem…

A head coach with no experience? 

I wanted to talk about Danny Schofield first because I think he’s probably the least to blame but also the first person to get it in the neck for the recent results. He stepped into the breach with only a couple of weeks before the season started and has had virtually no time to do anything other than follow the same plan that his predecessor would have followed if he’d have stayed on. 

Schofield has a fair amount of experience as a coach of youth football and as an assistant but this is his first job as the head coach of a senior team. The club have given him a very difficult job to step into the role and manage the transition from a squad that nearly made it to the Premier League to a objectively weaker squad that is most likely going to be at best a mid-table Championship team but is increasingly looking like it will be having to fight a relegation battle.

Leigh Bromby has seen something in Danny Schofield and this job was offered to him as an incentive to stop him from leaving the club to manage in Belgium around the time of the playoff final. So far, three defeats from three games and three tactically inept performances, this looks like a strange decision but hopefully this decision will pay off in the long run. 

I was at the game against Preston North End on Tuesday night and I kept looking over at the technical area to see what Schofield was up to. He’s a hard man to read, he’s quite subdued on the touchline compared to Carlos, more like Robins or Powell who would just take it all in. My concern is that he is also a bit slow to take action too. Both in terms of changing tactics and making subs. We were three-nil down and had conceded more or less the same way three times before he realised we needed to match up their formation and switched to five at the back. But by then the game was gone and it was too late.

So, to summarise, I started off saying that it wasn’t Schofield’s fault and he’s not had enough time to have made any impact but then I’ve talked myself into thinking that he’s actually struggled in the areas that he is able to influence. So while he’s far from the main culprit in Town’s struggles, it’s not helped to have a novice head coach.

Poor fitness levels after a short preseason? 

Town’s playoff exploits left them with a tricky problem for this season’s preparations. As our 21/22 campaign ended around four weeks later than every other Championship team it meant our off-season break started a lot later too. That meant having to either push back the start of preseason or give the players a much shorter break.

To Town’s preseason started around a fortnight later than many other clubs, which was made worse by being pinched from the other side by the season starting earlier than usual due to the winter World Cup break. 

I don’t have the sat nav stats that the club collects from those little sports bra things they wear, nor know how much their legs are burning or how much their lungs feel like their lungs are going to burst during a game. But on Tuesday night I could see that Jon Russell just stood and watched as players waltzed past him in midfield at times. Mahoney, who was playing his first competitive game so should have been fresh, looked completely done in after 60 minutes and was hanging back instead of making himself available during attacks when playing as a wingback, and several other players would be gasping for air with their hands on their knees whenever the ball went out of play. 

My observations from the stands are anecdotal stuff and the stat from the training sessions may say the opposite but my feeling is that we’ve been outworked by our opponents as well as outplayed in all of our defeats and fitness has played a part. I also think that mistakes and poor execution are often symptoms of poor fitness as it’s a lot harder to get the basics right when you’re too busy concentrating on breathing.

So, I don’t really know if fitness is a problem but I suspect it might be. Schofield has certainly mentioned the short preseason in his post-match press conference. In many ways, I hope it is, because it’s an easy problem to fix. Get them on the training pitch, beast them for a few weeks, then once the fitness levels increase we’ll see the performances on the pitch improve too. Only, that time on the training pitch isn’t easy to find in a hectic fixture schedule, so it shows we’ve messed up our preseason planning.

Have too many good players been sold?

In my other articles I’ve tried hard not to dwell too much on the players that have left because it’s a bit depressing to constantly hark back to the past. You wouldn’t want to be telling your new girlfriend about all the awesome stuff you used to do with your ex, so similarly, it feels a bit wrong to say how much better O’Brien was at carrying the ball through midfield. Or how Toffolo could overlap down the wing a lot better than Ruffels. Or that Colwill was a lot better at carrying the ball out of defence than Boyle. Or that Sinani was more of a cultured ballplayer than Mahoney. 

The truth is that we have let a lot of our better players go over the summer. The players we’ve brought in to replace them aren’t as good as them yet, that’s not how we work but they have potential to improve and eventually be as good or better. That’s the plan at least but it takes patience and involves transitional periods where we have to rebuild before we come back.

I’m not sure it’s true that too many of our good players have been sold though. If you look back to the players that did so well last season, the success was built upon Sorba Thomas’ set pieces, a solid defensive unit that is mostly still there, and Danny Ward finished just about every chance we were able to put his way. The big miss is O’Brien but arguably Rudoni is the best signing we’ve made this season and he looks like he could have the thing the O’Brien never brought to the team: goals. 

So, yes, we’ve seen a lot of players leave and we’re weaker because of it. There are new players though and in time they could reach the same standard but in the short term we’ve got to accept that we’re weaker. 

Are the tactics wrong?

My dad complains that I’m obsessed with tactics and formations but I think it’s a factor in Town’s recent woes. In all of our games we’ve been overwhelmed out on the wings at times and the fullbacks have been exploited by wingers that have then crossed the ball back in for simple goals. Sometimes this has been because the fullback hasn’t stopped the cross but also because the winger hasn’t provided enough support.

I think the shape we’ve been setting up in so far has been leaving huge spaces for our opponents to exploit. The midfield aren’t protecting the defence nearly enough and we often get confused about whether we’re pushing out to press or sitting deep to soak up pressure. Then we’re doing a bit of both which means there are gaping holes to pass into 

Then in possession, I don’t really know what the plan is because we have had three terrible first halves and three slightly better second halves where we’ve been chasing the game. So in those first halves when we’ve had the ball we’ve looked completely lost and have struggled to keep hold of the ball, making basic errors and trying to force things too quickly. Then in the second halves we revert to a more possession-based system which is nicer to watch but is also quite sterile and lacks a cutting edge. Which is no surprise as this was a huge issue last season even when we were quite a good team.    

So, yes, there’s a lot of work to do on the tactical side of the game. That’s no surprise given how little time Schofield has had to work with his team. Even more so when you consider that he didn’t even know he was going to be the head coach until the morning Carlos quit. 

Do the players have bad attitudes? 

I don’t think the players want to pay badly. Their body language may look bad and they seem frustrated or angry at times but that’s because they know what they should be doing and it’s not happening. Similarly, some of them say or do silly things on social media and that gets blown up out of proportion. They’re young men and want to be winning games, so it’s understandable that they get wound up when it’s not going to plan but that’s not the reason it’s going wrong.

I’d be more worried if the players looked like they were happy to lose game after game but I don’t get that impression. I think it will really hurt for them to have gone from third in the league to bottom in such a short space of time. They know that they’re letting themselves, the fans and everyone else at the club down at the moment. 

I thought it was quite funny last season when we were putting together a great run when people inside the club talked about what a great bunch of lads the players were; of course they are when we’re winning. Now is when you truly see who the good characters are. The ones that keep their heads up and want to work for the team during a losing streak are the true team players. The ones that take their bats home and don’t want to play aren’t really team players.  

Is it a playoff hangover? 

I’ve seen this argument bandied about, but I’m not buying it. We’ve had a couple of months to get over our disappointment now and it’s time to move on. While it was a big let down to get so close to the big prize of promotion, everyone gets a fresh start when a new season begins and you’ve got to begin again from zero points. 

Luton and Sheffield United both suffered playoff disappointment too and they’ve both started the season better than us, so we can’t hide behind the playoffs as an excuse. If anything we should use it as motivation to try and go one better this season. Though the idea of pushing for automatic promotion has gone from seeming overly confident a few weeks ago to downright demented after such a poor start.

Could it be as simple as bad luck?

I generally feel that luck’s role in a football club’s fortunes is underplayed. Tiny margins can affect games and sometimes it’s not down to the manager, player or official but just outrageous fortune that decides how things work out. I’m not so sure you could say that Town’s bad start is bad luck though because I can’t really see how we could possibly have got anything out of any of these games. 

I suppose we may have nicked a point against Burnley in the opening game if we’d scored an equaliser during the spell in the second half when we started to play a bit better but, if we’re honest with ourselves, they had the ability to find another gear and get more goals if we had scored anyway.

So as much as you could probably go into each goal and pick out unlucky deflections and bobbles but the way we’ve played so far has deserved nothing but three convincing defeats – which is exactly what we’ve been dealt. If anything, I think we were a bit lucky against Burnley to only be beaten one-nil after being so convincingly outplayed. 

So what is the problem with Huddersfield Town?

I think all of the above reasons are a factor in Town’s poor start to the season. Poor fitness, an inexperienced head coach, a weakened squad and the wrong tactics are all factors that definitely don’t help. There’s also momentum that becomes a problem once you’ve got on a bad run, the fact you’re playing badly becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy and everyone starts overthinking and it becomes very hard to turn things around.

One thing I find reassuring after writing this article is the fact that many of these issues are temporary. The underlying fundamentals of this squad are good and if Schofield can find a bit of form we may be off to the races. He’s going to need to find that form fairly quickly though as the crowd have already lost patience with him judging by the boos from Tuesday night and it’s now a question of how long the board’s patience will last.