FIVE lessons to be learned from 2020/21 STEVEN CHICKEN
REFLECTS ON A SEASON OF CONTRASTS
ANOTHER season has been consigned to the history books, but 2020/21 is not one Terriers fans will look back upon with much fondness.
A promising start gave way to a truly miserable second half in which Carlos Corberan’s side claimed just three wins and slid perilously close to the relegation zone.
That unthinkable fate was thankfully eventually avoided, but there is still plenty of work to be done over the summer to avoid a repeat.
Here are our five conclusions on that campaign. admitted back in October that the club were actively trying to reduce that wage bill and that they were holding on to their money to ensure they were able to ride out a season of empty stadiums and lost revenues.
The release of the club’s retained list means that wage reduction job is now surely mostly if not all of the way complete – and that means the mitigating circumstances are disappearing too.
If this season was just about getting through the worst of it to reach the point where they could start rebuilding, then they are now at that point. Their ambitions for next season need to be adjusted accordingly: ‘Survive relegation’ just won’t cut it.
Before the depth of Town’s financial limitations became apparent, we had hoped this might be a season of finishing anywhere from 10th to 14th and then improving on that for what would hopefully be a playoff push the following year. It’s a year too late now, but that must nonetheless be their target again next campaign.
Halfway through the season just gone, it felt as though we were heading for that cosy mid-table campaign – but then the lack of depth we all worried about last summer came back to bite big-time.
It’s been apparent that while some players have been at very least able to fill in capably, if not step up into the first team as regulars – Josh Koroma, Rarmani Edmonds-Green, Ryan Schofield, Aaron Rowe – that small handful of players was the limit of what Town would realistically afford to call upon for any kind of regular football.
Playing a Romoney Crichlow or a Demeaco Duhaney in the odd game here or there was fine, but needing them for weeks as a time was never part of the plan and Town’s injury crisis from December to April made that painfully clear.
Town’s first XI is pretty decent, but having to play five, six or seven backup players at a time was a nightmare.
Ten outfielders played in at least 50% of the minutes across the 12 games Town won this season: Naby Sarr, Jonathan Hogg, Pipa, Juninho Bacuna, Harry Toffolo, Lewis O’Brien, Fraizer Campbell, Isaac Mbenza, Carel Eiting and Josh Koroma. We’re also going to chuck in the next player on the list, Rarmani Edmonds-Green, just to give us a second centre-back.
In the 10 games in which Town started nine or ten of those 11 outfielders, they took 20 points. When they’ve started seven or eight of those 11 players, that immediately plummets to just 19 points in 21 games. And when they’ve only been able to play between four and six of those 11 players, they have taken just 10 points in 15 games.
The key question for the recruitment team this summer therefore needs to be: “If the first-choice player in this position picked up a three-month injury on December 31, would we make a January signing to replace them?”
If the answer to that is “yes”, then they have to make that signing now – not wait until January.
Corberan said in his end-of-season review before the Reading game that his side struggled to adapt to the loss of key personnel, not just in terms of sheer numbers but in terms of what specific individuals offered to the side.
He wasn’t wrong on that, and nor was he wrong when he said there were things he could have done better too.
Corberan erred in his approach to rotating the squad before and after the Bournemouth game in December, which had a short-term benefit but a long-term cost.
He was also two games too slow to move his side into the more safetyfirst approach that yielded seven crucial points in five games in March-April.
And there have been certain games where warning signs should have been heeded but his reaction to the growing danger was either too slow or non-existent: away to Stoke, at home to Wycombe, away to Derby, away to Preston, at home to Rotherham and away to Blackburn.
That lack of squad depth didn’t help his cause at all, of course, and Town started to struggle soon after the number of subs allowed was increased from three to five in