Why was Sorba Thomas dropped?, Diarra the difference maker, the change that improved Rudoni and is Fotheringham actually quite good? – Notes on the win at Preston

I appreciate this post-Preston game blog is a bit late, given we’re playing Rotherham tonight but I’ve been struck down with the bug that’s going round, so I’ve got behind on things. 

The win at Preston was huge, not least because it was the first time we’d won there in around 500 years (my zero key got stuck but it feels about right). The three points also mean we can now imagine a world where we’re not stuck at the bottom of the table and things don’t feel quite so miserable. Or at least they don’t for me, because I have an unfathomable tendency towards optimism when it comes to Huddersfield Town, despite years of evidence where events have played out the other way. 

Anyway, here’s my look back at the Preston game…. if I get the chance I’ll do a team prediction for tonight’s game later on.

Weak excuses for Sorba’s omission leave space for speculation 

Before Boxing Day’s game even started, the major talking point was the fact that Sorba Thomas wasn’t anywhere near the squad. Danny Ward’s omission was explained away with reference to a kick to the back (from one of our overzealous young academy graduates) but Thomas was just not in the squad.

When asked after the game, Fotheringham gave some pretty shoddy excuses for this. Alluding to the squad being too competitive for Sorba to get a place on the bench and him having played a lot of games. Both these reasons are bonkers when you consider he played about six minutes of the World Cup and has otherwise had a lovely long break (more so than the rest of the squad because he swerved the bootcamp-style training trip to Marbella). And leaving Sorba Thomas at home because you thought Connor Mahoney was genuinely a better option on the bench is demented. 

So there was obviously more to leaving Sorba Thomas out of the squad. I don’t know what it was but for brevity I’ll use bullet points to list my wild guesses in order of likelihood:

• He’s not trained hard enough in the week and been dropped
• He’s had a bust up with Fotheringham or broken disciplinary rules
• Has a January transfer lined up and the club don’t want to risk an injury
• He consumed his own body weight in sprouts on Christmas Day and was unable to board the team bus because of the additional girth he had put on from one day’s overeating.

A tight, scrappy, encounter

Town missed Sorba Thoma’s pace and creativity though as the game lacked spark for the majority of the opening seventy minutes or so. I’m always keen to talk up the Championship as a great level of football and how excellent the standard is but anyone who tuned into this game as a neutral would have quickly switched off. It was turgid, dreary stuff and neither team deserved anything from the game as there were almost no meaningful efforts on goal.

When Preston managed to score it was because of  a canny bit of play at a set piece, when Johnson put an arm around Hogg, which meant he couldn’t keep tabs on Evans. A predator like Ched Evans doesn’t wait for permission when opportunities like that come his way, so it was inevitable that he was going to score, and that’s exactly what he did.  (Correction – Cunningham actually scored the goal but Evans wheeled away and celebrated like he’d scored despite the fact his teammate behind him had connected with the ball. While it’s obviously not the the worst thing he’s done in his life, it’s still pretty baffling behaviour.)

One of the noteworthy incidents of the game came from David Kasumu, early on, when he put in one of his trademark dodgy tackles which led to a yellow card which most of the home fans were expecting to be red. It’s debatable whether it was at the threshold of being bad enough for going straight off but he needs to be careful with those kinds of tackles as other referees might have sent him off. 

Diarra makes the difference

While it was Rhodes’ brilliant strike that brought Town back into the game after they looked to be dead and buried for so long, the real catalyst for change in the match was young Brahima Diarra. His introduction to the match sparked a huge change in the team and gave everybody a lift.

I’ve made the comparison before but watching him play, when he’s at his best, reminds me of when I watched Gazza playing when I was a child. I love the way he picks up the ball and drives forward at defenders without fear. He’s exciting to watch and makes things happen. The pull back for the assist for Rhodes’ goal was superb too, showing good vision and excellent athleticism to get onto the ball in the first place. 

He’d struggled to influence the game as much as he might have wanted when he started against Watford but coming on against tired legs and a weaker opponent gave him a better platform to show what he can do. There also seems to be an understanding between him and Jordan Rhodes which could be something to build upon, given it created one goal and nearly led to another minutes later when Rhodes hit the woodwork. 

Rudoni shines further forward 

Another bright spark in this game was Jack Rudoni, who was probably my man of the match. He was a relentless presence going forward for Town and it seemed like he had a bit more confidence too, with a bit of swagger entering into his play as he took players on more and tried a few more tricks with the ball at his feet. He seems more at home playing in a more advanced role, as a wide attacking midfielder, rather than deeper in midfield (though he did a job back there when Diarra came on in the later stages too).

The assist for the winner has to have helped his confidence. Obviously the goal has to be next on his list, which will be huge but I’m feeling more and more confident it will come soon given his recent performances and the fact he’s now playing in a more advanced role. 

Is Mark Fotheringham getting it right on the training ground?

This game was pretty bad for 70 minutes and Town had a part to play in that but Town unquestionably finished the game strongest and deserved to win based purely on how well we closed out the game. It’s too small a sample size to get carried away yet, but could this be the start of Mark Fotheringham’s work on the training pitch paying off? It could be that we got those late goals because we were the fitter team and Preston couldn’t live with our intensity. 

I’m dubious about coaches when they say they want to be the fittest team in the division because what coach is going to say he wants to have the laziest squad in the division but it may well be that Fotheringham is actually backing up the talk now. 

In fairness to him and his coaching ability, he has got the team into a much better defensive shape. We make far fewer daft defensive errors these days despite playing largely the same players as Danny Schofield did. 

I’m not trying to say Mark Fotheringham is one of the most exciting young coaches to come out of Germany (though he seems to like to say that) but I think there are some faint signs that he might actually be doing a decent job in tricky circumstances. That can all change very quickly but so far I think he’s doing a little bit better than average, which is not bad considering the circumstances he took over in and how badly Danny Schofield did despite inheriting a team that had finished third last season.