Luton Town (the team many, including myself, think should not have been reinstated to the competition after they had been beaten by a Swindon team fielding an ineligible player) came from behind to beat Stockport County 3-1 in the whatever its called Cup Final at Wembley yesterday.
This means that the Bedfordshire Hatters have a trophy to, perhaps, rescue what’s been a very disappointing league season for the team that was most pundits’ choice to be Champions of League One before a ball is kicked. That being said, Luton are in maybe their best form of the season currently and so there is still the possibility I suppose that the six point gap to Stockport and Stevenage in the last two of the Play Off places can be bridged in their last five matches. If that was to happen, there’d be many fancying them to become the third promotion team.
Given that the club that I reckon was picked as potential Champions most by those who didn’t fancy Luton winning the title, Huddersfield Town, have a point more than Luton with four matches left for them to play, their promotion hopes aren’t gone yet either. However, with us to be faced tomorrow, followed by a trip to Bolton on Saturday, their prospects don’t look that great – they’re in a position where even four four wins would still leave them needing a pretty big collapse by one of the four sides currently in third to sixth positions in their remaining matches.
Huddersfield have to be the League One team to have spent the most in the last two seasons (I mean sides like Birmingham, Wrexham and Luton are excluded because they’ve only had one season at this level in that time) and their latest Accounts show they lost £22.4 million last season. It seems to me that such a level of loss cannot be sustained by a League One club over a period of two seasons and more, so if it’s not to be promotion for the Terriers this season, there will surely have to be some reining in on the spending this summer.
Last season, Huddersfield finished tenth and although they look on track to better that this time around, poor results in their last four games could change that. So, why is a side that had so much faith placed in them back in August, seemingly going to come up short again this season?
Looking in from the outside, the most obvious reason for me has been apparent in two of their last three home matches. In the third of these matches on Good Friday, a goal in the 96th minute was enough to rescue Huddersfield from defeat against Play Off rivals Reading, but, in the other two, it was Lincoln and Wycombe who pinched a point with late goals. The Champions elect had trailed 2-0,. but got back to 2-2 in the 93rd minute, while there was a crazy finish on Saturday against Wycombe as Huddersfield led 2-1 going into added time, conceded almost straight away, then went ahead in the 96th minute only to lose the three points as the visitors scored after 101 minutes!
Promotion sides don’t tend to be in the habit of drawing home games they’ve been leading in 2-2 and 3-3 through conceding very late equalisers and, although they’ve tightened up defensively in the second half of the season, their total of fifty six conceded is more than you’d expect from a top six side already.
If City play as well as they did on Saturday, it’s hard to see Huddersfield getting the win they need, but, even if they do, a top six finish still looks beyond them to me.
On to the quiz, seven Huddersfield related questions covering a period of sixty six years with the answers to be posted on here on Wednesday.
60s. Born in a place called Swallownest, this forward never matched the scoring rate he maintained at Huddersfield at the start of his career. I think I’m right in saying that all seven of the Football League clubs he played for either wore stripes, halved shirts or shirts with white sleeves at some time or another over the period since he began his time in the game sixty four years ago. Despite his good strike rate, the fact he didn’t get to fifty league appearances in his four years as a first team squad member at Leeds Road rather shows where he stood in the pecking order at the club.
His first transfer saw him crossing the county border to play for a team which, like Huddersfield, was a real power in the game a very long time ago. Once again though, he rather struggled for game time, before he moved to a club where Tommy Docherty would have been his manager (he may even have signed him). Two goals in twenty seven starts meant he was moving on again without establishing himself, but he did better on the south coast as he managed to maintain a one in three strike rate over more than fifty appearances.
Next there was a spell at a club that is already promoted this season before returning to Yorkshire to play for a side that are still hoping to go up. Thirty goals in seventy appearances persuaded another 25/26 promotion hopeful to take him on, but that move didn’t work out, so he briefly upped sticks to America to play for some Comets and when he returned to England, it was to play in non league football for a place with a historic connection to that country. It wasn’t the end of his time in the Football League though, as he played a couple of games to finish at one of his earlier clubs (the one that has a striped shirt which is unique in the current EFL) and he was to be given a testimonial game by them well after his playing days had ended for his service to them in a range of jobs including groundsman and commercial manager. He died last year at the age of eighty one as another victim of dementia thought to be caused by his heading of the ball over a long period in his football career, but can you name him?
70s. Nicknamed “Bamber” at his first club because he was studying for an economics degree at the time, this forward also played for the British Olympic side in qualification matches for the 1968 games. This ended in a failure which was something he didn’t really experience much in a career that was spent mostly in the old First Division and featured a goal scored in a Cup Final at Wembley. His time at Huddersfield was the exception to the rule though as they were in a decline that would eventually see them go from First to Fourth Division football during the seventies – who am I describing?
80s. Yes, he loved ET – it was released while he was a Huddersfield player after all! (5,5)
90s. He made five league appearances for Huddersfield during this decade, has a non playing connection with City and spent time pretty recently working as a Technical Director at a club in the Polish Second tier that was promoted in his first season there. When the next season wasn’t going so well, he had a game in charge as caretaker manager, then stepped aside for someone who he had worked with before – someone who had played a few games for us in the 80s. As far as I can tell, both men are still with the Polish club, but can you name them?
00s. Crap 70s glam rock outfit once turned down by Keith Chegwin does the pressing!
10s. Religious man with a form of acne?
20s. Wanderer meets Royalty!
Answers to follow:
