Michael Duff’s system starts to take shape – Notes on Huddersfield Town’s 7-0 friendly win at Guiseley
Huddersfield Town had another emphatic friendly win on Saturday, brushing aside Guiseley 7-0 in their second warm up game of the preseason after beating Emley 5-0 last weeekend. Obviously the result was secondary but the game provided a reasonable workout for the Terriers and a step up in exertion, as the first teamers played a full half of football each, having only played for 30 minutes a piece last weekend.
There were some signs of Michael Duff’s tactical work starting to bed in with the team too and the positions and attacking shapes seemed to be following a particular plan which I suspect we’ll see a lot more of in the season to come.
In this article I’ll wring whatever talking points I can from a game where we battered a team that are several steps below us in the football league. It sounds like there wasn’t much to learn from this sort of exercise but it was actually quite interesting to see how Town are changing under their new head coach.
I thought Matty Pearson did OK in this game but I worry how much responsibility he had to carry the ball forward out of defence or launch it long. He looked comfortable enough in this game but knowing his skillset, I fear he might struggle in this new system against a more fearsome opponent because he’s a bit of a meat and potatoes defender so isn’t likely to turn into Franz Beckenbeur overnight just because we’ve changed the system.
