Terriers ready for one-game shoot-out!

HUDDERSFIELD Town’s play-off semi-final comes down to this – a home clash with Luton tonight.

The Hatters dominated the first half at Kenilworth Road on Friday night but, nonetheless, found themselves behind early on after Danel Sinani raced through on goal off Harry Toffolo’s pass before firing a shot past goalkeeper Matt Ingram.

Sonny Bradley restored parity later in the half, but after the break it was Carlos Corberan’s men who put themselves firmly on top thanks to a couple of tactical tweaks that helped them take better control of the game – but neither side was able to fashion that golden opportunity.

With a short turnaround between the two games, there has been plenty of work for Corberan and his players to analyse how to get the result they need to book their place at Wembley.

Luton have made Kenilworth Road an incredibly difficult stomping ground for even the very best away teams all season with their performance on Friday showing exactly why that has been the case.

But in this parish we are much more concerned with what Corberan’s side did, and on that front we were not disappointed.

The Terriers were made to labour through the first half but matched their hosts for energy and determination, forcing the opening goal against the run of play and getting to the break with the scores still level despite coming under near-constant pressure from Nathan Jones’s side.

The relentlessness of the game over those first 45 minutes was incredible.

This 1-1 result – and the lack of an away goals rule – means the prize of a trip to Wembley will now be decided by a straight showdown at the John Smith’s Stadium.

That seemed an attractive prospect before Friday’s game and even more of one at the break. It would be churlish to now complain that Town failed to turn their second-half domination into a winning goal to take the advantage into the second leg.

Just to get it out of the way so nobody can say we didn’t mention it: yes, that was a penalty on Harry Toffolo in the first few seconds. But yes, it was also a penalty on Cameron Jerome later in the half. Those big decisions don’t always even themselves out, but thankfully on this occasion they did. We praised Jon Russell’s enormous influence on the Terriers’ work on the ball against Bristol City last weekend, and Nathan Jones and his analysts had clearly taken note of that too with their gameplan revolving around starving Town of his ability to set the tempo and spray the ball into dangerous areas. Luton immediately made clear their intention to double up on Russell and force him to rush as much as possible, and initially Town struggled with that.

They could not get the play going in the first half at all and failed to

Sinani is someone with the rare talent for coming up big at moments of the greatest pressure