There’s no need to fear tough start
THE TERRIERS FACE A DAUNTING OPENING TO THE NEW CAMPAIGN – BUT THIS COULD BE JUST WHAT THEY NEED
HUDDERSFIELD Town face a tough start to the new Championship season with newly-relegated Norwich City first on the agenda followed by – in no particular order – four of last season’s Championship top ten (Brentford, Nottingham Forest, Swansea and Derby) and newlypromoted Rotherham United.
Going by the average league position attained by their first six opponents the previous season, this is on paper Town’s hardest start to a league season since 2006/07 - and even then only just.
Since the turn of the millennium, the only significantly more difficult start they have had than they face this season was in 2000/01. Back then, they faced all three newly-relegated sides (Watford, Sheffield Wednesday and Wimbledon), as well as one of the previous season’s play-off semi-finalists (Bolton). A run of one win, one draw and four defeats was the result.
At the other end of the spectrum, there’s the 2011/12 promotion season, which began with Town facing two newly-promoted sides (Bury and Wycombe) and nobody who had finished higher than ninth the previous season. You will of course recall that Town were in the midst of their undefeated streak at the time; they won two, drew four, and lost none.
Here’s the good news, though: football isn’t played on paper, and on the whole there is almost no correlation between the results Town have achieved in their first half-dozen games of a new season and the previous season’s league positions of their opponents.
The seasons 2001/02, 2009/10 and 2016/17 all threw up among the hardest season-opening fixture lists Town have faced this century but resulted in 13, 13 and 16 points respectively, with David Wagner’s team winning five and drawing one despite playing two sides who had come down from the Premier League (Aston Villa and Newcastle).
It’s an obvious lesson, but after the couple of seasons Town have just had it’s one we could probably all do with a reminder: it doesn’t matter how good the opposition are if you play better than them.
That is the whole point of bringing in Carlos Corberan as head coach, after all. His appointment is an attempt by the club to move away from pragmatic tactics designed to counteract the opposition’s strengths, and instead move towards making the opposition worry about what Town can do to them.
Too often last season, even after new attacking recruits arrived in January, and especially behind closed doors, Town struggled to work out what to do against supposedly weaker opposition in games where they had plenty of the ball - even though they did pretty well when the opposite was true.
Ironically, there is an argument that a practical approach against Norwich and Brentford would be just the ticket and give Town a better chance of securing a result - just as it did as the Terriers took four points off Thomas Frank’s side last season.
But that is no longer what Town are about, we are told, and it will be interesting to see just how Corberan approaches those two games, whether it pays off, and what the reaction will be from the players, the club and the fans if it doesn’t.
The most likely scenario is that Town will get a mix of results over those first few games: some good, some bad, some indifferent. It is also likely to take time for the players to adapt to Corberan’s new playing style. Town’s first opponents, Norwich, found that out when Daniel Farke first arrived at the club, just as the Terriers did previously under David Wagner.
We have been promised exciting football from Town under the new regime, but there is nothing more exciting than winning.
There will surely be times this season when fans’ patience is tested and Corberan will have to ask the fans to trust in what he is doing. That difficult early run of fixtures may be just such an occasion.
Conversely, though, it could be the perfect opportunity to show that things have changed, that the last two seasons in or around the relegation zone are behind them, and that they are indeed ready to step into a new, brighter future.
For the moment, everything is just potential, and that is exciting.
Now for all that coiled stored energy to be unleashed on the pitch.