Break could favour Town’s survival bid
ON the latest episode of our Huddersfield Town podcast, Ooh To Be A..., Steven Chicken and David
Hartrick talk about the EFL’s decision to resume the Championship season but not Leagues One or Two - and what that might mean for the Terriers should the campaign be curtailed once more.
There will be a transfer window at some point. What will that look like for cash-strapped Championship clubs, are Town better or worse off than their competitors in that regard, and what do they do with their out-ofcontract players?
And there is finally a date for Town’s next game as Wigan come to a fanless John Smith’s Stadium on June 20. What can we expect from that game and what are the implications for the Terriers’ survival hopes?
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Here’s a taster of the kind of thing you can expect...
I think it is going to be one relegation spot that is being fought out. Barnsley are seven points from safety at the bottom, Luton six, and Town are three points clear.
Hull haven’t won since New Year’s Day, and even accounting for the fact we’ve had three months missing that’s a pretty appalling record!
They’ve had the heart pulled out of the first team at Hull. Charlton are in free-fall and look like they’re losing the guy who has been their match-winner (Lyle Taylor).
I think Town will be alright just by virtue of what other teams do around them. Town’s situation is quite unique because the Cowleys have been able to suddenly have a pre-season midway through the season.
We were starting to see the evidence of ideas coming to fruition, we were starting to see that they had the personnel they wanted for their favoured 4-2-3-1 system, we were starting to see certain different patterns of play from players like Karlan Grant who were just adapting and changing their game a little bit. Now they’ve had a lot of time to work on it.
We did say a while ago there was a world where Town actually came out the other side of this slightly better for it.
They got the players back nice and early, they’ve had plenty of time to work with them, they were in OK form going into this and there were clear signs of progression there.
It’s a strange thing to say but I think the circumstances have ended up slightly favouring them.
The counter-argument to that would be that every club has had the benefit of that pre-season, every relegation-threatened team has the opportunity to take stock.
They can all be as brilliantlyprepared as they want, but three still have to go down.
If they’ve taken the opportunity and the players have been really on it with their fitness work then it could make a bigger difference for Town than anyone else.