[LU] Huddersfield

[Nick Allen]

I think we put this one down as a bad day at the office. Or rather a bad
day at the office with a chuffing idiot for a line manager. The team did
not look up for it - and surprisingly, for the first time this year, in
my experience neither did the Leeds crowd, who seemed fairly muted to
me. In my opinion Huddersfield are a fairly average team for this
division. They were up for getting stuck in last night - well it was a
local derby so you'd expect nothing less - but they were pretty limited.
That said they were better than Leeds and deserved to win the game. 

Our only change was Kandol for the injured Beckford. The game was played
with intermitent very heavy downpours which made control and all that
kind of fancy stuff difficult either side of half time.

In the opening exchanges there was a bit of huff and puff from both
teams, some lively tackling and bit of headless chicken approach to
tactics on both sides. But we pretty quickly settled to a reasonable
control of the opening 20 minutes with the midfield getting through a
lot of work and the defence coping pretty well with any threats. We had
a couple of half chance but nothing to shout about. As the half went on,
they came more into it and began to threaten our penalty box. They were
playing balls over the top and wide into the channels where their
midfield boys were racing on ahead of their forward line, with our
midfielders in turn not doing a great deal of tracking back. We had a
couple of free kick from 25 yards or so that Johnson and Kilkenny
whistled a yard or two over the bar and into the empty lower half of the
south stand. 

Then it got silly, or more precisely Jonathon Douglas got silly. His
first booking was a petulant kick at someone that was going past him
down our right hand side towards the deadball line. Not only did Douglas
hack him down but as the guy lay there Douglas stamped on the back of
his leg. Fortunately for Douglas the ref didn't see the second part of
the offence otherwise it would have been a straight red. Not satisfied
with this, 8 minutes later, he clipped the heels of a midfielder
charging onto one of these balls over the top - he was past our last
defender and heading towards the corner of the box and Douglas wasn't
going to catch him. Douglas is the team captain and "experienced pro"
and given how much everyone has prattled about him being anxious to get
back in the team to help with the promotion push, it was a pretty
boneheaded performance. Despite Douglas' dismissal I still felt we had
the class to beat Hudds.

This of course, got Huddersfield's tails right up and they came at us
quite hard. In this spell another ball was fed through, a forward chased
it down, Caspar came out and took the ball at the guy's feet. From my
angle it looked like the guy followed through into the back of Caspar's
head. Lubo clearly thought the same and began having some serious words
with their forward. Caspar stayed down. It all became a bit of a melee.
Which ended with Lubo being booked and their guy seeing red (it may have
been for a combination of the challenge and the afters) - I see on the
LUFC website, Macca thinks that may have been a bit harsh.

Second half and while we may have had more of the possession, they
created the better chances. They hit the bar, and Caspar had to be
pretty agile a couple of times to tip decent efforts over the bar. Their
goal was a cross from their left that went over all our defenders to
their bloke who had a free header at the back post - where Kenton had
been sucked into the middle again - which he finished well, heading back
across goal and in off the far post. In truth we didn't threaten much -
Johnson got away down the left, cutting in at an angle towards the box -
looked like he couldn't decide between crossing and shooting and in the
end he thundered it across the face of goal and out for a throw in the
other side. The main pisser with this being that Kandol was stood
un-marked, far post, 6 yards out - Johnson simply didn't look up. The
only other real chance came in injury time when Carole and Prutton
combined cleverly down the right, Prutton cut a low cross back to
Freedman, who slid a low gentle shot towards the bottom corner, which
the keeper scrambled away for a corner, narrowly missing spilling it at
Kandol's feet in the process.

Apart from a woeful lack of heart last night, and Douglas' lack of brain
(perhaps its not administration we need but the Wizard of Oz) what
really pissed me off was our inability to do anything with deadballs. We
had 4 or 5 free kicks in and around the box all of which finished up in
the stands. And we had 7 or 8 corners taken variously by Kilkenny,
Johnson and Carole NOT ONE of which got beyond the man at the front
post. This is basic. It frankly is disgraceful. And I seem to remember
that we used to suffer from this when Macca himself took corners back in
the day. One of these corners that bounced off the front man, resulted
in Huddersfield having a pretty good effort on our goal about 30 seconds
later - it might even have been the goal...I don't recall.

Funny enough none of our starting 4 midfielders finished the game - 3
subbed + Douglas


ANKERGREN - not at fault for the goal - couple of other handy saves on a
bad night for keepers - distribution actually quite reasonable

RICHARDSON - continues to be exposed by the midfields lack of interest
in playing the right which does not help his fragile confidence - had a
few forays forward in the second half that came to little

KENTON - still coping gamely with being a fish out of water - some rash
challenges - some efforts at getting forward, including another
hilarious/random charge into their box, crashing through tackles before
eventually falling over - was AWOL for the goal

MICHALIK - steady solid performance

HUNTINGTON - ditto

KILKENNY - a flitting lightweight contribution - some decent stuff as
ever - when Douglas departed, he moved into the middle and did very
little which doesn't back up claims to be first choice CMidfield - left
Frazer exposed again

DOUGLAS - effin idiot

HOWSON - again for me, the pick of our midfield - hard working, getting
stuck in and trying to make stuff happen when in possession - given the
captain's armband after Douglas' dismissal - unbelievably subbed after
about 80 minutes

JOHNSON - some muscular runs down the left but in truth not all that
involved

FREEDMAN - not all that involved - tried to get on the end of a couple
of flicks from Kandol but didn't have the pace - this is where the team
missed Beckford and continued to play like he was there - v good late
effort

KANDOL - when the ball was played to his head he did his stuff - when
the ball came to his feet, hopeless

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HUGHES - came on late - didn't do much other than one low scuffing shot
that forced a save from the goalie

PRUTTON - on for twenty minutes or so - beefed up the midfield a bit -
nearly combined with Carole to produce a late equaliser

CAROLE - direct - two or three decent runs at the defence - little else

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Ref - one or two odd decisions - eg - booking their player for a foul
but not giving the free kick...can't really argue with the dismissals

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A little boisterous - lots of 14 year olds giving it large...bless