STEVEN CHICKEN

We said after the Bournemouth game that performances didn’t matter anymore, only points. In exactly that spirit, Huddersfield Town’s performance on Saturday was less than mindblowing, but three crucial points were nonetheless secured.

A better or more interested team than the half-speed Forest side that started the game would have exploited the mistakes Town made on the ball in a nervy and hugely frustrating opening 20 minutes.

But at this stage we don’t need to worry ourselves about whether everything is perfect and ideal; we already know this side has weaknesses. The Terriers are in the relegation fight because their performances in the second half of the season have largely not been good enough. Saturday’s result could legitimately have been anything between 0-0, 3-0, 0-3, or 3-3 and we wouldn’t have felt like we’d learned anything new about this team.

For now, Town just need to be alert to opposition errors, take their chances, minimise their own errors at the back, and manage the game well when they’re ahead.

Despite some obvious flaws in their performance – most of them in those initial 20 minutes – Town ticked all of those boxes over the final 70, and that proved enough to get the job done. Full credit to them for that.

At his press conference on Friday morning, Jonathan Hogg confirmed our suspicion that the side’s improved second-half performance against Bournemouth was largely down to their switch to the 4-3-3 they preferred in the first half of the season.

When you see simple moves breaking down too easily because players are trying passes to teammates who aren’t there or making runs that nobody knows to pick out, it tells you that side is not playing on instinct.

Any athlete will tell you their best performances come when everything feels like it’s running on automatic. Overthink things, and your muscles will trip over your brain’s feet.

Town did need to reset things for that run of games from Birmingham to Brentford, because even the automatic stuff had begun to abandon them. That’s

Any athlete will tell you their best performances come when everything feels like it’s running

on automatic.

not surprising when you consider seven of the 14 players who appeared in at least half of Town’s games in January-February (Ryan Schofield, Alex Vallejo, Richard Keogh, Kieran Phillips, Alex Pritchard, Duane Holmes and Scott High) were either not at the club or barely used from SeptemberDecember.

Hogg also said Corberan’s style and training were unlike anything he has encountered before in his lengthy career. It must be challenging to integrate January signings and emerging youngsters into the side in general, let alone in such numbers.

We still maintain Town should have been better regardless of all that, but it’s definitely been a big factor, and it had especially hurt Town in wide areas, with Pipa’s injury limiting both his minutes and effectiveness on top of the already-absent Harry Toffolo and Josh Koroma.

Pipa’s return at the City Ground was pre-empted by Corberan at his pre-match presser, but Toffolo’s inclusion was a pleasant and complete surprise. Sure enough, after a tactical adjustment midway through the first half to get him higher up the pitch, Holmes on the left wing and give Aaron Rowe the run of the full right wing, Town suddenly looked a lot more like their better selves again.

The funny thing is that the first 20 minutes was the period where Town had their highest possession percentage and easily their best pass success rate – but the crucial difference was that later on they were losing the ball because they were being adventurous on the counter-attack, rather than because they were being sloppy and making unforced errors.

It’s not been easy for the former and current Town duo, albeit for different reasons.

Holmes has suffered from a touch of James Milner syndrome: He’s such a good utility player that he’s never actually played in his best position, which for us is more or less the role O’Brien played last season – box-to-box 8 tasked with winning the ball just outside his own penalty box and riding challenges to carry it swiftly to edge of the opposition box before laying it off to more creative talents.

Playing out wide or in advanced