Town fans need to keep faith in the new regime
THE gap between Huddersfield Town and the relegation zone is now just four points, and that is very, very worrying given that we had thought and hoped just a few short weeks ago they were past the point of looking back over their shoulders.
That is arguably inevitable when you lose the games you couldn’t afford to (Middlesbrough, Stoke and now Barnsley), as well as dropping points against Wigan.
After the couple of years Town have had, talk has once again turned to the overall running of the club that has left them in this situation.
That’s understandable. Even senior figures at the club would tell you lots of mistakes have been made over the last 18 months or so, and fears of a double-drop are legitimate. There is no hiding from that with the league table as it is.
But some of the stuff we’ve seen on Twitter, Facebook, forums and in the comments section of our ExaminerLive site does have us shaking our heads a little bit. It seems to us that there are no more changes the club could possibly make in terms of personnel.
Yesterday marked one year to the day since David Wagner’s departure. The wrong appointment was made as his successor, but new chairman Phil Hodgkinson – whose takeover only went through on July 3 – rightly gave Jan Siewert just four games of this season before making a change.
The Cowleys made a brilliant start and we still have every faith
West Brom Leeds Brentford Fulham
Nottm Forest Sheff Wed Swansea Millwall
Bristol City Preston
Hull
Cardiff Blackburn Reading
QPR Middlesbrough Derby Birmingham Charlton
L F A Pts 2 50 30 53 5 43 23 52 9 44 21 46 8 41 30 45 6 35 26 44 9 39 26 42 7 32 30 42 6 34 32 41 8 41 40 41 9 37 33 40 10 40 35 39 7 38 40 38 10 35 35 37 10 34 29 36 12 45 51 35 9 28 34 34 9 28 36 34 13 33 44 32 12 36 39 29 they are the best men for the job. The new head of football operations, David Webb, is not even halfway through his first transfer window since starting the job at the end of August.
On Sunday, the club announced the appointment of a new interim chief executive, former Brentford man Mark Devlin. Two signings have come in with at least two more expected to follow. One player has gone out with at least four also expected to leave.
It’s painfully clear things have to be done better, but we need to give all of those people the chance to do their jobs.
Hodgkinson, Cowley, Webb and Devlin – now the four most directly responsible and accountable nonplaying staff at the club when it comes to performance on the pitch – have a combined 473 days in their posts between them.
That’s a little bit less than four months each on average.
It’s absolutely right to hold those people to task when things are going wrong, and it doesn’t get more wrong than going straight from the Premier League to League One. Mistakes in the summer transfer window aside, there is not much that could have been done differently after Town had taken just one point from their first eight league games.
The reality is that if Town had taken five or six more points from those four games against Wigan, Middlesbrough, Stoke and Barnsley, we would not even be talking about this, and the failings in those games were largely down to underperformance from a set of players that have proven several times over – including against Blackburn and Forest in the midst of this poor run – that they are capable of better.
The pertinent question is this: do you think the Cowleys will be able to implement the new playing style circumstances have dictated they have largely been unable to bring in, and get more out of this team now more players are back from injury and new signings have been made with more on the way?
If your answer to that is ‘yes,’ then you need to give them the chance to do that – and give the new regime a chance to prove they are capable of making the right decisions and show they mean it when they say they will leave no stone unturned turning this club back around.