Russell’s emergence has pushed Eiting
THERE are just three Championship clubs this season not to have been shown a single red card – Barnsley, Millwall, and Huddersfield Town.
Of those three, the Terriers also have the fewest yellow cards, with 62. This does not tell us anything in itself, of course – there is practically no correlation between a side’s cards record and their league position.
But it does hint towards something that has held Carlos Corberan’s side in very good stead this season, and not just because it means they have had just one player suspended all campaign.
Levi Colwill missed the trip to Bournemouth in October after picking up his fifth yellow card of the season in his tenth outing; he has not been booked in any of his 15 games since.
It’s no coincidence, for instance, that Town have the fifth-best record in the division when it comes to goals conceded from set-pieces. A large part of that is because they are, on the whole, very good at defending them.
But it’s also partly because they don’t give a huge number of them away – something that has drawn praise from Corberan on several occasions this season.
Town have the lowest fouls per game rate of any side in the division, committing just 9.1 fouls per game.
For context, the team committing the most fouls – Birmingham City – make over 33 per cent more, with 12.4 per game. So what makes them so good at avoiding costly fouls?
It’s not simply a matter of Town having so much of the ball that they have fewer tackles or fouls to commit, as with the possession-hungry Swansea City and Fulham.
Town have had just 48pc possession this season. Nor is their tackling particularly clean. They commit 0.71 fouls for every successful tackle they make, which is pretty much exactly bang average for the division.
Instead, it’s a matter of not making very many tackles at all. Only Swansea (12.1 per game) make fewer than Town (12.8), and they have the highest possession percentage in the Championship. After adjusting for the amount of time each side actually spends off the ball, Town’s numbers are striking.
They have the fewest tackles per minute out of possession (just 0.27 – Sheffield United have the most, with 0.39), and by far the fewest fouls per minute off the ball too (0.19 – next on the list are Cardiff, with 0.23).
That overall refusal to commit silly fouls is just one of many fine details Corberan demands from his players, and the evidence of Town’s clean sheet record and league position both suggest that their lack of tackling is not holding them back at all.
What Town lack in get-stuck-in, they more than make up for with positional awareness – a press that forces passing errors out of opponents by other means, a willingness to put in the hard yards rather than opting to simply hack an opponent down – and a back line and goalkeeper they can trust to protect the penalty box.
WHEN Carel Eiting cut his stay in Belgium short by having his contract with Genk terminated so he could return to the John Smith’s Stadium, we doubt this is exactly what he had in mind.
The midfielder has rarely featured despite being fit and available for every game except one (the trip to Millwall), playing just 282 minutes without making a single Championship start.
It does not appear to be a matter of Carlos Corberan being unhappy with what he has seen from the Dutchman, per se.
The head coach expressed himself to be pleased with what he saw from the playbuilder in a couple of his outings, including the 90 minutes he played against Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup last month.
For Corberan, the issue is simple. Eiting was unfortunate that Jon Russell emerged into this first team just days after he made his vaunted return on transfer deadline day, impressing sufficiently in the FA Cup against Barnsley to earn his first-ever Championship start against Sheffield United the following week. The youngster has not been out of the first XI since.
As Corberan put it after again leaving Eiting on the bench against Hull City: “Sometimes the possibilities for the players depends too on the performances of players that are playing in the same