Wycombe Wanderers vs Huddersfield Town

Competition: EFL Championship Matchday 13

Date: 24/11/2020

Score: 0-0

Ground: Adam's Park

5 Conclusions from the Game

1. Town did not vote in favour of 5 substitutes

When I saw the bench today, I was excited as I thought that Matty Daly, Rarmani Edmonds-Green and Kieran Phillips would be given a chance and could provide Town with some unexpected flair. I was shocked to see none of the B team feature and for me, they looked like bench fillers. Five subs allow teams to change half their outfield team and this really goes against Town, as Town's aim is to tire out the opposition and with teams being now able to make five subs, it seems like it really counteracts Town's game plan.

2. Midfield is a bigger issue than attack

Before tonight, Town had gone 10 consecutive games scoring and while this did show promising signs, only on three occasions did Town score multiple times during a game. In my opinion, the midfield is not creating enough. Eiting is linking up well with Mbenza, but O'Brien and Hogg are not contributing enough going forward. O'Brien and Hogg combined are producing 1.8 key passes per 90 this season and that is the same as Carel Eiting is averaging - who is average the most key passes per 90 in the Town squad. If the midfield were creating loads of chances and the attack was missing them then I would agree with fans saying we have problems in attack, but its the fact that we are not creating enough chances, let alone high-value chances, that is our big issue.

3. Pressure points

The Stoke defeat made it clear that Town does not know what to do when they can't play to Hogg and today was no different. Hogg does the simple stuff very well, but when a team presses him, he can not cope, Wycombe pressured him tonight and he was very ineffective. Town has already experienced this this season when Toffolo has been man-marked out of games and now it seems that teams are doing the same to Hogg forcing him to make mistakes. Town really needs to adapt and not rely on certain players to perform, for us to be any sort of threat this season.

4. Diakhaby criticism is boring

I think when you are the walking living memory of the Premier League woes, you are always going to be an easy target for criticism. Tonight I would argue Adama had an alright game. He certainly had a bigger impact on the game than Campbell. I also think he is a better defender than he is an attacker. He won 1/1 tackles, he was not dribbled and made two interceptions, but that argument is for another time. In attack, there were a few times where you could see what he was trying to do but just failed. I agree that the way he went off did not look good, but at least it showed he was angry to be substituted.
Bottom line is when fans are going into the game, complaining about a certain player being in the team, that player has to score a hat-trick for anyone to even admit they had a good game. Diakhaby is seen as an easy target and the constant criticism is just boring.

5. A Clean Sheet

The only positive that can come from today is that we kept our first clean sheet in 4 and it will have given the defence some confidence, but when you are against a 38-year-old, 16 stone striker, who only scored 10 goals in League 1 last season this really should be expected of them. Naby Sarr again showed what a threat he was from set-pieces, with him being very unlucky that his connection with an inch-perfect Mbenza cross hit the post. I thought Schindler and Stearman had okay games. Toffolo didn't have as much of an impact going forward as I would have liked and Bacuna had one of his most disciplined games of the season in my opinion. Ryan Schofield wasn't really tested in goal, but it was good to see that he coped with the pressure of playing for the first team well. There was an early scare but he certainly put that behind him and had a solid game
That concludes a classic game that I am sure will live long in my memory...
I am just glad that the game are coming quickly so I can forget about this game as soon as possible.

Town Team:

Starting 11: Ryan Schofield, Juninho Bacuna, Christopher Schindler, Naby Sarr, Harry Toffolo, Jonathon Hogg, Carel Eiting, Lewis O'Brien, Josh Koroma, Adama Diakhaby, Isaac Mbenza, Fraizer Campbell
Subs: Joel Pereira, Rarmani Edmonds-Green, Jaden Brown, Richard Stearman, Matty Daly, Demeaco Duhaney, Danny Ward, Kieren Phillips, Josh Koroma
Formation: 442