Huddersfield Town 1 Watford 0 (13/04/2018)

1- Huddersfield doesn’t look like Watford, feel like Watford, smell like Watford. For one thing it’s tentatively and occasionally gloriously sunny as we arrive, which is something that Watford hasn’t been on matchday for a while. For another it’s, like, hilly and that. Daughter 1 blinks away her sleepiness as we emerge from the car… “is this really Yorkshire?”, as if we were in Narnia or Magrathea.

But as far as the Premier League landscape is concerned there are commonalities between two small(ish) town clubs whose support is very much rooted in their local community… even if the degree of Huddersfield’s smallness becomes a matter of some debate in the Rhubarb Cafe Bar as Wikipedia has decided that it’s the eleventh largest city in the country. Daughter 1 prefers “like London, but smaller”, because there’s traffic.

Similarities or not, there’s a shared purpose in the mutual and wholehearted celebration of Chelsea coming back from behind to cement Southampton in the relegation zone. Celebrating Chelsea goals feels a bit dirty of course, but such moral compromises have to be made at the business end of the season. As Will later points out, given Mark Hughes’ arrival at Southampton there is joy to be taken in many of the potential relegation outcomes. Not all of them, obviously.

2- The Stadium itself is a beautiful thing, whatever it’s called now. The arched stands are distinctive and elegant, woods form a striking backdrop to the stand to our right.

The most impressive feature of the stadium however is that impossibly, claustrophobically noisy. The home side have been talking up the atmosphere all week; with Chelsea, Arsenal and Manchester City to come in their remaining games a lot was riding on this and the troops had got the message. This racket dwarfs anything we’ve been exposed to this season, quite extraordinary.

It had an impact on the game from the off which after a tentative couple of minutes is similarly oppressive, the home side’s pressing game being bellowed on from the stands. In truth there was a lot of bluster and not much end product, a garbage crusher bluntly forcing the play towards us without much in the way of clear chances coming with it. Principle obstacle was the immaculate Craig Cathcart, making his first start since forever and once again turning simply being in the right place into an unelaborate art form. Our full backs look particularly vulnerable; Daryl Janmaat has three good goes at getting booked before finally sealing the deal, after which he looks surprisingly disciplined and realises neither of the gloomy predictions prevalent in the away end – “he’s going to get sent off” and “he’s straight off at half time”. Meanwhile on the left Aidy Mariappa is standing in for the injured Holebas and looks almost exactly like a centre back playing on his weaker side as full back for fifteen minutes or so, but he too settles down and stifles the Terriers’ threat on their right.

3- The bigger problem introduced by Mariappa being at left back is our lack of balance in attack. Kiko Femenía is our only source of speed, and whilst Roberto Pereyra sidesteps and twists we inevitably come inside from the left; he has no pace, and no crossing option bombing past him. Nonetheless, the biggest achievement of the first half is the gradual subduing of the home crowd to merely boisterous levels; by midway through we are the side making the better chances. Deeney has a vicious shot blocked at close range, Doucouré cuts into the box and drives straight at Lössl. Pereyra draws a free kick to the right of the goal as we attack prompting fanciful speculation about a Neil Cox tribute goal in memory of a freak goal eighteen years ago from the same position, but alas we got a rehearsed move that didn’t quite come off instead, more prosaically.

Nonetheless, come half time there are reasons to be positive. We’ve weathered a storm that has proven to be more of a passing, aimless squall and we’re beginning to get on top – a platform to build on. Instead… the second half never really gets us anywhere. Certainly we’re never under the cosh – and as you’ll have noted, Huddersfield don’t manage a shot on target until, critically, they do. But we’re not getting very far either, albeit we’re not getting very far with an increasing amount of the ball. Our tendency to go long is in part pressured by Huddersfield’s pressing and in part deliberate, seemingly, since such balls are played under little pressure. Perhaps to bypass a midfield in which the still-missed Jonathan Hogg is charging around doing his thing, in part, perhaps, to expose what is perceived as a vulnerable backline. Either way it’s ineffective.

Richarlíson is brought on for the presumably tiring Femenía. Coinciding with another lull in the home stands he gets a noisy ovation; I’m all for this, poor form or otherwise, but can’t help but feel that our captain has earned slightly more patience over the course of several seasons and a very large number of goals. He gets no such support, albeit he’s again entirely ineffective. No more so is the newcomer, whose only strong performance in five months came in the anomalous demolition of Chelsea.

4- We’ve been starting to toy with Huddersfield, moving the ball around tidily and looking like the better side for the first time. We don’t look desperately like scoring, though whirligig Will Hughes once again runs himself into the ground and occasionally dances through promisingly into the box. If someone’s going to score though, it’s us. Except it isn’t.

Which casts a whole new perspective on the game, obviously. Gloomily reviewing email and social media accounts on the way back down the M1 I’m surprised (for some reason) by the negative tone. The game wasn’t of particularly high quality and neither side looked potent but it was intense and there was no lack of commitment on show. We’ve all seen much worse in terms of entertainment, put it that way.

Nor did we play particularly badly, as has been the case in the majority of the recent run of games. Defensively we were absolutely fine at worst for the most part (although someone who shall remain nameless was calling Seb Prödl every name under the sun for his flimsy response to Depoitre’s challenge in the build up to the goal). Nor can Doucouré, Capoue, Hughes, Femenía, Pereyra reasonably be lambasted, though they’ve all had better games.

The problem is that the team doesn’t know how to score goals. This doesn’t really reflect upon Troy either, much as he was ineffective; he competed well with what he had, which wasn’t an awful lot, and neither Andre Gray in his brief cameo, nor Okaka in recent games have done markedly better.

The problem, and the challenge for Javi Gracia, is that we’ve played pretty well over the last three games and earned one point from them. It’s not that we’re playing badly as much as that we don’t have an effective or efficient way of playing, particularly away from home as reflected by no away goals since he took over (and scarcely any decent chances in those games). And whilst it’s true that any one of our missing players would have given us something that might have made the difference here – balance from Holebas, speed of thought and feet on the counter attack from Chalobah, raw terrifying pace from Deulofeu, energy from Cleverley – the problem is more fundamental than missing players.

5- It’s hard to begrudge Huddersfield their win, much as I’d argue they didn’t really do much to deserve it on the pitch, much as being trapped in the stand to witness the celebration by slow-flowing aisles was something we could have all done without. There was a single-mindedness to their support that’s rare in a home crowd and could only be borne of a situation in which everyone knows they’re punching above their weight and mucks in accordingly. We’ve lost that a little bit I suspect, which is where the parallels with Huddersfield fall down, at least for now, and the complaints borne of unreasonable expectations start.

Nonetheless, it would be nice to think that we could enjoy the end to a season for a change, and confirm our safety through our own actions. “More or less safe” and “Absolutely safe” aren’t the same thing, and the distinction becomes more critical as the number of games dwindles. We’d have to work very very hard to go down from here, but getting nothing out of reasonable performances isn’t the best platform.

Yoorns.

Karnezis 3, Janmaat 4, Mariappa 3, Prödl 3, *Cathcart 4*, Doucouré 3, Capoue 3, Femenía 3, Hughes 4, Pereyra 3, Deeney 2
Subs: Richarlíson (for Femenía, 58) 2, Gray (for Deeney, 81) 0, Sinclair (for Hughes, 90) 0, Gomes, Britos, Kabasele, Okaka