Huddersfield Town’s extreme prudence under Darren Moore results in zero wins out of five conclusions…

Following two goalless draws, the Terriers were unable to complete the comeback as Hull City secured all three points on Saturday afternoon thanks to a goal from Liam Delap.

For more than ninety minutes, Huddersfield Town played a resolute and defensively sound game before losing, sending them limping home from the other side of Yorkshire.

Here are our five thoughts on a match in which Darren Moore’s strategy rendered the outcome the sole foundation for an impartial evaluation of the proceedings, leaving the manager with just one victory in his previous nine games.

Following two goalless draws, the Terriers were unable to complete the comeback as Hull City secured all three points on Saturday afternoon thanks to a goal from Liam Delap.

For more than ninety minutes, Huddersfield Town played a resolute and defensively sound game before losing, sending them limping home from the other side of Yorkshire.

Here are our five thoughts on a match in which Darren Moore’s strategy rendered the outcome the sole foundation for an impartial evaluation of the proceedings, leaving the manager with just one victory in his previous nine games.

1. Catastrophe

We must confess, we had to work through the emotions a bit with this one. Town were just a few minutes away from getting what would have been a more than acceptable point, against a somewhat better team than the one they were lauded for holding a week ago.

As such, it initially felt a bit harsh to us to see them eviscerated en masse for their lack of ambition soon after the final whistle: the stifling gameplan that attracted such plaudits seven days earlier had gone that close to working again.

 

2. Play

Even if Liam Delap had not snatched that point away from Town at the very end, this performance was clearly a step down from what we saw against Watford, with Kyle Hudlin struggling to hold anything like the same level of influence on the ball.
A big part of the issue was that the full-backs were playing with tethers around their necks. Whether by design or not, Ben Jackson and Yuta Nakayama played as though they had been instructed to enter the opposition half only after the ball itself had crossed the halfway line, despite the fact that you could see they were itching to get forward sooner.

 

3. Ghost Trio

The town attack—what vanishingly little of it there was—ended up feeling like one of those videos you sometimes see on Instagram of 500 children playing against two professional footballers. Even with that effect being amplified by Hudlin’s height, there was little he and Thomas could do on their own. Consequently, they did very little.

 

The reasons were clear: Town’s ultra-conservatism with their full-backs and midfield setup meant that Thomas and Wiles were unable to move in as close to Kyle Hudlin as Thomas and Jaheim Headley had against Watford. In the first two minutes, while trying to work out Town’s shape, we noted it as a 3-4-2-1. That notional front three, of sorts, then vanished into the ether; we’re not sure we saw Town in anything other than a flat 5-4-1 for the rest of the game.

 

4. Waiting for Godot

All of which we thought was fine at halftime. The situation reminded us of a couple of games back towards the beginning of the 2021/22 season. Town had started the season poorly that year, not helped by half a dozen players being ruled out through COVID, but Carlos Corberan successfully bolted the back door at home to Preston, and his side were lucky enough to steal a victory despite not having a shot on target, thanks to a silly own goal.

5. Endgame

We’re mindful that we said only a few days prior to this game that we were hitting pause on criticizing Moore given what he had to work with in the squad, even with a fully fit side. It’s fairly unlikely that all our hopes for this game were pinned on an out-of-form Koroma with his grand total of one goal this season.

 

In fairness, Hull (a), Southampton (h), and Sunderland (a) looked like tough assignments on paper; Town’s more realistic hopes of climbing the table come from the fair, kinder run of games that follows throughout December as they look to complete their little i-SPY Championship Mid-Table Clubs book. For a side in Town’s position to lose the first of those three games 1-0 away from home to a top-half side is not a tragedy on its own; it’s a perfectly normal, expected, and unnoteworthy result.

While Hull (a), Southampton (h), and Sunderland (a) may have appeared difficult on paper, Town’s more realistic chances of moving up the table come from the kind of games they have scheduled throughout December in an effort to finish their small i-SPY Championship Mid-Table Clubs book. It is not a tragedy in and of itself for a team in Town’s situation to lose the first of those three games 1-0 away from home to a team in the top half; rather, it is a completely understandable, expected, and unremarkable outcome.

As always, context is the problem. With only one win in their last 10 games and a dismal expected goal differential of just 0.2 over their last two games combined, Town now has fewer points than games played.