Vital member Impact gives his views post match
The anthem goes ‘Who can beat the Town today?’ Well on today’s showing, pretty much anyone. Outfought, outclassed and criminally, outworked, there really were few positives to take from a lacklustre performance.
It was obvious this would be a feisty, physical encounter as in the space of 3 minutes, two town players were blatantly taken out late without a free-kick being given despite the referee having a long chat with one of the offenders.
Town dominated the opening twenty minutes without properly testing the keeper. P Clarke had what seemed to everyone in the ground a clear penalty turned down after both a shove and a trip, and Graham Carey wasted the best chance of the day after having all the time in the world to pick his spot from 10 yards but still fired wide.
The only goal of the game came from a catalogue of errors from Town. Gudjonsson scuffed his attempted cross-field quick free-kick, allowing Oldham to send a ball past Town`s completely static defence to Tounkara. Despite a sliding tackle from the otherwise faultless Bennett, the ball carried on its path towards goal to allow the same man a simple tap-in.
From then on it was all Oldham, although Rhodes had a great chance to equalise, but chose to try and knock it past a recovering defender rather than shooting with a clear sight of goal 15 yards out. After Town`s best player on the day by far, Pilkington, was taken off injured and replaced by Arfield, Bennett made a couple of good saves to keep Town in the tie and it was relief all around to hear the half-time whistle.
HT: Oldham 1-0 Town
At half-time, Alan Lee replaced the ineffective Jordan Rhodes, mainly due to the abysmally poor lack of service to either of the front men, meaning a return to the Nathan Clarke/Andy Booth days of hoofball. Oldham had chances to kill the game off early in the second half, most notably when yet another Town attack broke down leading to yet another quick Oldham counter attack catching the Town defence square, but danger man Taylor shot wide under no pressure.
After 20 minutes of Unibond-standard “football” from Town, the long-awaited change of Roberts for the redundant Carey injected some life into the terriers and it looked like the tie was starting to turn. Afobe made some good chances for himself, Roberts knocked in some dangerous balls and Arfield started to make the runs at the Oldham defence that he was bought for. Alan Lee was getting flick-ons from throw-ins to fall dangerously around the 6 yard box yet on none of the 4 occasions did Town have anyone running on to them. Unsurprisingly, no breakthrough came before the final whistle.
—–
You could say that Oldham didn`t deserve to win as they were average, but due to the horror show from Town there really are no arguments with the result. Peltier, Johnson and Gudjonsson were particularly poor; the former let the ball go under his foot in excess of 5 times for throw-ins. With neither Pilkington nor Roberts on the pitch we completely lacked ideas and gave the strikers no hope. I can understand us knocking a few long balls to Alan Lee, but Rhodes and Afobe have no chance against physical defenders, and we lacked any sort of variation when Lee did come on. As is the norm with this league, the officials were poor, particularly shown when the linesman tried to give Alan Lee offside from a goal-kick. If we were given the penalty it could have changed the game, although looking at the rest of the game no doubt we`d have missed not just the goal but the stand as well.
Roll on Cambridge…
Vital Huddersfield Town on:
Vital Huddersfield Town on:
Join Vital Huddersfield Town
It’s easy to REGISTER HERE, simply click the link and enjoy getting involved!
