It seems like at the moment, the fixture computer
has given us a chance to make up for our sins from earlier on in the season.
First up Rotherham, now up Huddersfield, who we went away to during this
unbeaten run and we had one of those games where we didn’t play particularly
well, took the lead and then in almost complacent fashion, tried to coast to
the end of the game and fucked it up when an attempted cross deceived everybody
and ended up in the net.

As also tends to be the case at the moment, the opposition have changed their
manager since the return game with Darren Moore becoming Darren No-Moore and
his place being taken by caretaker Joe Worthington, who will soon be replaced
we are led to believe, by Michael Duff, the man who took over from Russell Martin
at Swansea and who after a few games, was labelled a PE teacher by the Jack
Army.  Looking on objectively, you would
say that Michael Duff could be excused for not wanting to rush through his
appointment in time for today’s game, given how well Saints are playing at the
moment.

Since the Watford game, the only news to come out of Saints has been positive
with the return of Kamaldeen Sulemana. There is a very real possibility that we
will have him, David Brooks and Sam Edozie all on the bench, ready to wreak
havoc against a tired Huddersfield defence.  As long-time readers will know, I am yet to be
convinced by Sulemana and would place him a very definite third behind Ryan
Fraser and Sam Edozie in the left wing pecking order.  I also feel that the fact that he cost to club
the thick end of £25 million quid is one of the reasons why he was playing as
much as he was before he got injured. Still, clean slate and all that and let’s
see what he’s got.

Saints are unchanged, with the team exactly what you’d predict from the last
league game.  Away we go and not a great
start with KWP dragging an early effort across goal.  It’s not a great opening twenty minutes or so,
with very little goalmouth incident going on, with Huddersfield pressing
aggressively from the front and in midfield and Saints seeming incredibly
lethargic all over the park.  We are not
taking our time to build up through the thirds and are instead we are playing a
couple of passes and then looking for the chip over the top which might work if
we had anyone on the pitch who could hold the ball up.  Che Adams is supposed to be able to do that
but he is wearing the Adidas Trampolino boots again, so the ball is bouncing
anywhere other than to another player in a red and white shirt.  Rya Fraser is being given 50-50 balls to
compete with much bigger defenders for and Adam Armstrong is not seeing much
ball at all.

We are struggling particularly in midfield to get a grip on things, and it
doesn’t help when Flynn Downes goes down injured.  He tries to play on, has some raw chopped
liver, goes down a second time and that’s the end of that for him.  I know that Russell is not going to bring on
Shea Charles and my eyes are rolling into the top of my head as Joe Rothwell
comes on to replace him.  The eye-rolling
is not for Rothwell as such but for the fact it means that Will Smallbone will be
dropping back to that defensive midfield position that just doesn’t work when
the opposition is getting amongst us like Huddersfield are.

Sorba Thomas picks up the ball on the right side and runs at Manning before
switching the ball wide and when it comes in from Rudoni, Thomas hits it and it
seems to flick off of Manning and zips into the net.  Thomas then runs behind the goal and goads some
kids in the Family Stand and then the Chapel and before doing a TikTok dance
with his teammate like an absolute fucking bellend. Don’t know you are mate, so
fuck off.

If I didn’t know who he was before, I did soon after as Huddersfield piss
through the non-midfield again with Thomas again doing the damage and his low
cross finds its way to Kasumu on the edge of the box and he rifles it high into
the net giving Baz no chance. Fucking hell lads, for fuck’s sake.

Well, the unbeaten record is severely under threat as we go in at half-time two
goals behind and we deserve to be two goals behind. This hasn’t been a smash
and grab so far as Huddersfield have come with a game plan and executed it
superbly and we have fallen into every possible trap that we could. We have
been shit to be quite honest, coming up with no answers to the questions being
posed.  However, booing the team off that
is in the middle of a 24 game unbeaten run is idiotic..  Personally, I’m casting my mind back to Jonno
Pace against MK Dons in 2011.  Who’s gonna
be the hero?

Che has been put out of his misery and David Brooks is on and we start the
second half with a completely renewed purpose and go flying forward. I kind of
sense that we have to get one back fairly quickly.  The previously anonymous Stuart Armstrong makes
good ground down the left and plays Wee Man through on the left and he gets
bundled off it for a corner.. In it comes from Stuart Armstrong, punched out by
Nicholls to the edge of the box and Rothwell producers a kind of sidewinder volley
that sends the balls screaming into the top corner. What a ridiculous fucking
strike that is.

Huddersfield kick-off and it ends with Baz, so we go again eventually building
up through KWP on the right.  He finds
Brooks who cuts infield and plays a ridiculous reverse pass between the
defenders to pick up the run of Rothwell who takes a touch before drilling it
across Nicholls and high into the net again. 
What on earth is this.  I am
amused that I questioned bringing him on.

The momentum is all with us as Smallbone picks up a ball in midfield and plays
a perfect ball to send Adam Armstrong in on goal.  No defender is going to catch him and as he
approaches Nicholls, the stadium gets ready and… he produces an absolute wanky
chip straight to the goalkeeper who just stands there and catches it.  To be honest, that’s almost as bad as Charly Alcaraz
and his chipped penalty.

Sensing that they’ve got a lifeline, Huddersfield settle down again and more
non-existent midfield shield from us and Matos strolled up from left back and
tries a pot-shot and it hits Smallbone and deflects miles up in the air and it
could go anywhere but of course if drops perfectly over Baz and into the
net.  Fuck. Off.

Russell goes to the bench again with twenty to go and and we’re just going for
it with Sulemana and Edozie both coming on. A few minutes later and Sekou Mara
is on to replace Adam Armstrong and you can’t complain about that one at all
because Armstrong has generally been poor today and I still can’t get over that
chip.

Immediately after Mara comes on, Saints build down the left Manning eventually
knocking the ball wide for Rothwell to run onto and his low cross along the 6
yard line towards Sulemana is obligingly toe pokes by Less, the Huddersfield
central defender and he sends it flying in at the near post given the
goalkeeper no chance. 3-3.

Huddersfield are done and looking increasing fragile now.  Brooks gets bundled over but no penalty given
and we recycle the ball back to KWP, whose ball in behind is reached by Brooks who
just to get his foot round it and pulls it back to the edge of the 6 yard box
and Mara spins and crashes it into the net. 
Mental.

With Huddersfield now being cooked, we don’t need another goal but you can
never have too many.  Sulemana and KWP
knock is about on the right before we lose it but Brooks get a foot in to block
an attempted clearance and it shoots across the goal and Mara has a wrestling
match with a Huddersfield defender before calmly rolling it back to Edozie, who
skips around the one defender who is not on his arse and crashes into the net
to make it five.

The board goes up and there are 13 minutes to go, the vast majority of which is
being added because of Huddersfield wasting time from about a quarter of an
hour mark onwards but the game is dead now. We could score more if we wanted to
but don’t need to and Huddersfield are done despite making a whole raft of
substitutions.

Well that was absolutely mad. That first half was absolutely terrible with us
being second to every ball and not being patient enough to keep the ball and
try and break Huddersfield down. It was all too rushed and looking for the chip
over the top too early and it was generally pretty poor. The substitution which
occurred when Flynn Downes went off totally lost us the midfield with Joe
Rothwell coming on and Smallbone reverting to playing as a defensive midfield.
Suddenly we had no defensive nous in there and the defence became exposed and
in ten minutes we had conceded two goals and gone in at half-time with a
massive amount of work to do. The second half with renewed energy and
bollockings no doubt dished out, we absolutely steamed into them and with two
brilliant goals in two minutes, ironically scored by the first half substitute
Joe Rothwell.

Then a key moment straight after that as Adam Armstrong was clean through with
just the goalkeeper to beat but tried a chip and enough said and Huddersfield
went back in front with a ridiculous deflection that looked miles up in the air
and gave Baz no chance at all.

With us seemingly drifting towards a 3-2 defeat, Russell Martin rolled dice
again with the substitutions and having talked up the bench and how strong it
was before the game, it worked for him. Joe Rothwell again was majorly involved
in the third goal with his cross been turned into his own net and the fourth
and fifth or down to two more subs, Mara and Sam Edozie. A quite ridiculous
afternoon.

I know it sounds daft to criticise the first half substitution because he
scored a couple of goals and got an assist  but at
the tactical meeting where Russell Martin laid out his football philosophy, he
spoke of controlling the game and limiting the opposition. You can’t do that
with no midfield when you haven’t got the ball. We got slightly fortunate today and that our bench is so
strong it’s like a cheat code to make up for any mistakes that happened earlier
on in the game, be that from players or manager. We might get away with it a
few times in the Championship but you can’t be playing games with so little in
midfield because you will lose more often than not.

Usually, it takes a defeat to be classed as a wake-up call but this game today
should certainly be classed as a wake-up call for us, even though we won. We
didn’t put the work in the first half and were deservedly two down at half-time
against a Huddersfield team looked really organised and looked like they had a
game plan which we were struggling with. The game plan was a close us down
aggressively, especially in midfield and that’s why the substitution before
halftime was so mystifying because, and I’ll say it again, playing Smallbone as
a defensive midfielder could work if the other team is passively sitting off
but if they’re getting amongst you, like Huddersfield were then it’s just a
disaster waiting to happen especially with Rothwell not being the most press-resistant
player either. The problem for them was that they couldn’t keep going for 90
minutes, which ironically ended up being 103 minutes because of the amount of
time that they wasted.

As I’ve said many times before, complacency is the biggest issue when you are
on a long unbeaten run and we got away with it today. Coming up next week are away
trips to Bristol City and West Brom and we cannot afford to have any
complacency because those are two teams who on paper and according to the
league table, are better than Huddersfield. The bad news is today that we’ve
probably lost Flynn Downes and Stuart Armstrong but we have players to come in
and all I hope for against Bristol City on Tuesday, is that Russell Martin gets
the balance of the midfield right and if Downes is out injured, then for me,
Charles has to play.

It was of course the proverbial game of two halves today but one player stood
out as being good for 90 minutes.  At
times it seemed like Jan Bednarek was the only defender we had and he led the
defence superbly through the game considering the lack of help they were
getting from the midfield. Another major plus was David Brooks. I’ve never
really appreciated how good he was before, but the guy is exceptional and it’s
ridiculous that Bournemouth have let him go out on-loan. The vision that he
showed on the second goal to pick out Rothwell’s run was amazing and there was
a couple of passes in midfield where he threaded the ball through three
players, that were ridiculous.