Huddersfield Town are aiming to bounce back this weekend
As his team gets ready to play Reading tomorrow afternoon, Huddersfield Town head coach Michael Duff is anxious to ensure that last weekend’s loss to Northampton Town “stays a one off.” The Terriers enter tomorrow’s match at John Smith’s Stadium fresh off a disappointing 3-2 loss to the fifth-from-bottom Cobblers at Sixfields the previous time out.
Despite goals from Jonathan Hogg and Herbie Kane in the last 20 minutes, Town was unable to overcome their 3-0 lead after falling behind in the first 51 minutes of the match.
Duff has admitted that his team performed far worse than expected the previous weekend and understands that the “lack of fight and energy” his players displayed against Northampton cannot be allowed to continue into tomorrow afternoon’s match.
At yesterday’s press conference, the head coach stated, “We had a pretty big meeting with them on Monday morning, and it wasn’t me just standing at the front pontificating saying ‘do this, don’t do this, don’t do that’, because that’s pointless. We got them to open up a little bit, and we’ll see if it worked or not. Tuesday and Thursday have been two really good training sessions since.” “You can sit around and feel sorry for yourselves in this game, no one feels sorry for you, and there are always excuses, but there was no excuse on Saturday.”
“I’ve also said that you’ll have four or five of those games this year, don’t worry about them, you’ll get beat, and we did. The same as you’ll have four or five where you’re really, really good, and you win three or four nil, and we’ve already had two or three of them as well, so don’t worry about them.
“You do worry about it if it’s back-to-back, and it’s week in, week out, but that one lack of fight and energy, with and without the ball, that’s the thing you can’t have, that can’t keep going on. It’s a one off, we need to make sure it stays a one off.”
The Terriers are tasked with putting an end to a run of three straight defeats tomorrow afternoon, which has left them fifth in the League One table, on 48 points from 28 matches played.
Town host a Reading side that are eighth in the division, on 44 points after 28 games, and Duff said on today’s opponents: “They’re really young and energetic, so if you don’t show levels of energy, we’ll get beat.
“They’ve got some quality, they’re sniffing in and around the play-offs as well, so they’ll be thinking they can come here, beat us and they’re right on our coattails.
“The change of manager hasn’t really changed much (Noel Hunt replaced Ruben Selles last month). They’ve carried on the good momentum, lost Sam Smith (to Wrexham), which we’ll have to wait and see whether that hurts them or not, but he is a good player.
“They definitely have a set way of playing, really good energy and quality in there as well.
“A lot of it is on us, we’re at home and we need to react off the back of last week, but if we think ‘well we’re at home, we’re just going to win’, we’ve been burnt by that one a couple of times. They’re a good team who will hurt us if we’re not at it.”
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