THE VERDICT: BARNSLEY 2 TOWN 1 TERRIERS GET THEIR DERBY JUST DESERTS
WHENEVER people say you make your own luck in football, they usually mean it in a positive sense. But when we say Huddersfield Town made their own luck against Barnsley, we mean it as a criticism.
A draw would have been a fair result but the cheapness of the two goals they conceded simultaneously makes it difficult to argue they didn’t deserve to lose.
Some fans may be pointing insistently at replays of both goals to find a ball outside the quadrant for the first goal or a foot over the line from the throw-in that produced the winner, but as Carlos Corberan pointed out after the game, both goals were preventable regardless that officiating errors may have occurred.
Town’s players were as oblivious to those offences as the officials, so while it may rankle to have lost a point to a clear foul throw, the officials are not entirely to blame here. The ball being outside the curve of the white paint was not responsible for the poor defensive choices that allowed Barnsley to equalise. Herbie Kane’s foot being over the line does not explain why four Town defenders could not get the better of the two attacking players they had to mark in the final seconds of the game.
This was not a high-quality game from either side, as the fact that all three goals coming from set pieces would indicate; and while Town were a long way above their worst they were also far from their best and never looked like getting another goal to add to Rarmani EdmondsGreen’s opener either side of Michal Helik’s two goals.
It’s a particular shame that
Edmonds-Green was one of the players culpable in that moment, because the young defender had otherwise had a good game that merited his first Terriers goal.
Barnsley clearly targeted both Town’s weakness at set pieces and their lack of creative ability from the off, taking their two kick-offs like a rugby teams: long punts into the opposition corner with every single outfielder immediately haring after ball and into the opposition half to get into position to defend the resultant throws.
They were happy to let Town try to play through them, confident that they would be able to hold them at bay and try to nick the game with those long throws and any corners they might be able to win from them. It’s not a sexy strategy but it was an effective one against a Town side that has now conceded more set-piece goals than any side in the division – except Barnsley.
This was also the fourth time this season that Town have ended up losing from a winning position, and while the 73 minutes separating the two Barnsley goals mean this hardly feels like the kind of dramatic collapse they suffered against Preston, Bristol
City or Stoke, it nonetheless speaks of a side that shows its naive side more often than Corberan would like.
This rather miserable assessment of the game is naturally coloured by the result, of course, and if they’d defended just one more throw-in they’d have reached the final whistle with a thoroughly unexciting but nonetheless decent point, especially given Barnsley’s overall excellent recent form. But that’s football: you can quite easily undo any and all of your good work with a couple of moments of insufficient concentration.
Games like this and small details like the ones that lost it for them are precisely why they are unlikely to mount a serious play-off push this season.
That all said, Town have advanced far enough that a defeat like this does not feel nearly as disastrous as the one on the same ground that finished with the same
Walton, Sollbauer, Helik, Andersen, Brittain, James (Kane 73), Mowatt (Palmer 87), Styles, Frieser (Adeboyejo 60), Woodrow (Miller 87), Chaplin (Thomas 74). NOT USED: Schmidt, Oduor, Moon, Collins
scoreline all the way back on January 11. They have demonstrated more than enough bouncebackability this season to make us believe they can still finish the year with a positive result against Blackburn tomorrow night.
Either way, they just need to get through it, and look forward to a January transfer window that will hopefully bring more firepower to help kill games like this off.