Bacuna set to benefit from working with Hiddink
EVERYONE knows Juninho Bacuna is one of the most gifted players on the Huddersfield Town books.
His natural close-control skills, pace to move away from opponents and ability to spot a chance have marked out the 23-year-old as a potential big-club player of the future.
He showed sparks of genuine class for Town in the Premier League and, while it didn’t quite happen for him as he flitted around various positions under Danny Cowley last season, he still finished with 40 appearances to help the club stave off the threat of relegation.
The Groningen product earned caps for the Netherlands up to Under-21 level before pledging his international future to the Caribbean island of Curacao, to play alongside his brother Leandro of Cardiff City.
Bacuna is contracted to Town for this coming season, with the club having the option to extend by a further 12 months at that point, and he’s already an integral part of the senior training squad under Carlos Corberan.
While the new head coach is starting out on his first job as boss in England, at international level Bacuna will now be working with one of the game’s greats. Dutch legend Guus Hiddink, the 73-year-old former Chelsea manager, has taken over as boss of the Curacao national team and will be taking Bacuna under his wing. Hiddink has managed some of the world’s best in his days with the Netherlands, Real Madrid, Chelsea, Valencia, PSV and Fenerbahce.
He’s been to the latter stages of international tournaments in addition to winning the European Cup, Intercontinental Cup and, of course, the FA Cup with Chelsea - not to mention six Dutch titles. His influence can only be good on Bacuna, who was told by Danny Cowley that the only thing that could stop him getting to the top of the game was himself.
STATS show that more than a third of all the Championship minutes clocked up by Huddersfield Town last season came from players who are no longer with the club.
Trevoh Chalobah, Elias Kachunga, Kamil Grabara and Danny Simpson all featured in over half of the available league minutes last season but have now left the Terriers.
Jonas Lossl, Andy King, Chris Willock and Emile Smith Rowe are all gone after their loans ended, while Jon Gorenc Stankovic has left for Sturm Graz on a free transfer. Rajiv van La Parra, Joel Coleman, Aaron Mooy, Collin Quaner and Rekeil Pyke played some small part last season and have subsequently left too.
According to data analyst Ben Mayhew, those players accounted for 34 per cent of Town’s minutes last season, meaning the club have lost more minutes than any other side in the division - and that’s before we take into account that Florent Hadergjonaj and perhaps Terence Kongolo are also expected to leave in the coming weeks.
By contrast, the average Championship side has lost around 19pc of
Another new face or two would go a very long way to settling the nerves of a few
anxious fans
their minutes so far this summer. That in itself is intriguing, because by the close of the transfer window last summer that league-average figure stood at 36pc, suggesting so far in this transfer window clubs in the second tier have only done around half the amount of outgoing business they did last summer. That underlines just how stagnant the transfer market has been across the board so far, with Town far from the only side yet to make big waves in this window.
They are one of 10 clubs to have made just one signing to date, with