The grace period for Huddersfield Town and Darren Moore has now expired in five conclusions

As Darren Moore made his return to the club he left in the summer, there was a lot of excitement surrounding Huddersfield Town’s trip to face bottom-place Sheffield Wednesday.

Terriers supporters were likely expecting the whole three points against the managerless and winless Owls.

In the end, neither team was able to break the tie, but Moore thought his team had been treated unfairly after a late goal by replacement Kian Harratt was disallowed due to an alleged goalkeeping foul by Tom Lees in the build-up.

As a result, Moore has lost all four of his games in command, extending Huddersfield Town’s own losing streak to five games. Here are our five observations about the match and, more significantly, what will happen after the international break.

Huddersfield Town struggled to find the right gear shift to carry out their strategy.

Given how incredibly poor they had been against Birmingham City just a few days earlier, a steady-going but unspectacular first-half performance away from home was more or less acceptable from a Town standpoint, even against the lowest team in the division. Naturally, Town would have like to go into the break ahead, but a newfound emphasis on avoiding any more careless mistakes is going to naturally instill some prudence in the players.

So we’re going into the interval without scoring? Fine. dull, but ok. Once it was accomplished, Moore tried to repeat the strategy he had used in the 1-1 draw with Coventry City a few weeks earlier: he made proactive attacking changes to push more players into the other team’s half and try to increase the pressure on Sheffield Wednesday.

As the game progressed, that did give Town more opportunities, but they consistently failed to seize them. With Kian Harratt and Delano Burgzorg both making excellent runs, Sorba Thomas had two different viable crosses on at one point in the final 30 minutes or so that would have undoubtedly resulted in goals. Instead, the Welshman sent his cross straight at Cameron Dawson, who barely needed to change his footwork to claim it.

To their fair, Wednesday generally performed well defensively; we have undoubtedly seen Town face off against weaker back lines than this. The only weakness Town’s feeble assault could find was Dawson’s nervousness when receiving crosses into a crowded box; in the first half, he mishandled one that Josh Koroma lobbed wide when he really should have at least forced a goalline clearance.

To their fair, Wednesday generally performed well defensively; we have undoubtedly seen Town face off against weaker back lines than this. The only weakness Town’s feeble assault could find was Dawson’s nervousness when receiving crosses into a crowded box; in the first half, he mishandled one that Josh Koroma lobbed wide when he really should have at least forced a goalline clearance.
That’s what Town got when Lees took out Dawson and Harratt put the loose ball in the goal, only for the referee to blow against the former Owls center-back for using his elbow in an unreasonable manner. We actually disagree, as did Moore, but it was difficult for us to feel any genuine sense of unfairness given that Town only had seven additional shots during the entire game and failed to strike the target with any of them.

The score of nil-nil was the proper outcome; if the two teams had continued the game using next-goal-wins rules, they would still be there right now. Unfortunately, it benefits Town just as little as it did the Owls.

We still aren’t sure whether Huddersfield Town is nearby or far away.

Recently, Town has had more draws than Wyatt Earp and Neil Buchanan visiting Ikea while wearing only their underwear, but they have been much less entertaining to watch. What do you make of it at this point in the season and so early in the manager’s tenure? Is it a promising starting point to build on and an indication that they will be (mostly) difficult to beat, or is this, alarmingly, the best they can accomplish?

Moore and the team appear to have the same mentality, or at least, we fervently hope that they do. To use a statement that is inadvertently disrespectful to his predecessor, they switched to Moore in order to give him as much time as possible to begin getting these guys back to playing football. The fact that both parties feel at ease adopting such a long-term perspective shows that nobody is currently in a panic mode.

The fact that Town has been so wildly inconsistent under both Warnock and Moore makes it difficult to evaluate them. They were strewn with mistakes and incompetent defensively against Plymouth, Norwich, Stoke, and Birmingham, but they were incredibly impressive against Leicester and Ipswich, ruthless against West Brom and Rotherham, and somewhere in the middle in their remaining games.

Whether on purpose or not, this game had the effect of starting over. Only five teams have a greater combined anticipated goals for and against than Town this season, and all of their games have been quite close. Town is drawing so many games, and the roughly even xG split (14.1 for, 17.6 against) shows that this is not by mistake; in fact, according to xG, they have more points than xG suggests they should have, even if they aren’t always coming from the proper games.

We’ve reached a point where we can’t entirely blame the unfavorable fixture list because Town has now faced teams from all across the league standings. As a result, we believe it is reasonable to draw the conclusion that Town has not benefited greatly by playing games in such a public manner, despite the fact that it did so magnificently toward the end of the last campaign.

That implies that something must change, and the obvious course of action is for Town to attempt to exert more control over how games are conducted rather than aiming to create as much chaos as possible and hoping the roulette wheel lands in their favor.

Whether or not that is a prudent course of action depends on how good this team is. They failed miserably in their first-half attempts to alter their strategy against Coventry and Birmingham. Here, Wednesday made things difficult by focusing more on keeping their clean sheet than on wanting to win, but we don’t use that as an excuse. Town lacked the ability to punish them. By any fair criterion, Town ought to have won this match.

We are strongly reminded of the first halves of both of Carlos Corberan’s seasons as manager, when Town was similarly uneven and the course of the season’s remainder proven to be impossible to forecast with any degree of certainty. Therefore, it is even more perplexing that both seasons took such drastically different twists around the halfway point. Will Moore’s style change be successful, or not? We sincerely have no idea.

After the break, Huddersfield Town has to show indications of improvement.

We must have at least some optimism soon because of this uncertainty as well as Town’s vulnerable position in a league table that now feels worth paying attention to. We don’t anticipate an unbeaten streak, but if they want to avoid severe relegation concerns, they must increase from a point per game to more like four points per three games. We will hold them to it as the absolute minimal level moving forward.

Take recovery days, travel time, and matchdays out of the equation, and Moore has likely only had six or seven full training sessions. For the time being, we can accept and appreciate Moore’s statement that he has had very little time with his players. By keeping some of what had worked successfully under Neil Warnock, he has, by his own admission, been forced to try to be pragmatic—a strategy that is essentially at odds with how Moore has typically chosen to approach things.

Now, a lot depends on how well they make use of this international break. Moore has expressed his relief at finally having quality time with his players and the potential impact that could have. We do, however, have a small concern that even a fortnight without a game is a very small window to actually make a difference.

Not to disparage Moore; it’s just a case of being cautious after been bitten. We all recall Fotheringham predicting how significant the World Cup break would be, only for them to emerge from it looking rather more jaded and with little discernible offensive improvement.

Since they were generally good, bad, or indifferent going into the break, they stayed that way on the other side, we have discovered virtually no association between international breaks and notable upturns/downturns in form during the past few seasons. There are only two significant exceptions in either direction:

“March 2022, just before the break, Town had lost to Millwall and Bournemouth in terrible performances, and they had effectively reached the end of their 17-game undefeated streak. After the break, Town returned reenergized and went undefeated till the play-off final.”

“March of the previous campaign under Warnock, albeit even then the progress had already started since Town had just defeated Millwall prior to the break.”

The players may have needed leisure and relaxation away from the game in those two exceptions, rather than fresh tactical and technical knowledge. But this is the first time in years that Town has entered a break so soon following a manager change; does it make a significant difference in this case?

The big surprise from Darren Moore was tactically successful but poorly executed.

When the squad rosters were released, we assumed Moore was planning to use a front line of Thomas, Burgzorg, and Koroma in a 3-4-3, but it turned out to be more of a 3-4-1-2 with Thomas positioned behind a front pair of Burgzorg and Koroma.

We chuckled at Moore’s suggestion that moving a third winger into a central position would improve the effectiveness of playing two wingers at center forward, but we actually believed it worked in most ways except for the most crucial one, the provision of a last ball. Yes, that is crucial, but Thomas’ most wasted performance occurred when he took Tom Edwards’ place at right wing-back.

We don’t want to seem overly judgmental in light of this, but we feel that some context is necessary: Thomas presently leads the division in predicted assists on a player-by-player basis. That’s great! But during the course of his Town career, assists have mostly come from set pieces; only one of his three or four this season—depending on whether you consider the own goal he ‘aided’ against Middlesbrough—have come from open play.

Even if we include own goals, that still leaves 19 of Thomas’ 26 assists while wearing a Town jersey coming from set pieces, and at least a few of the seven considered to be from ‘open play’ really involved a second ball back into the box after a set piece.

All of which is amazing and good; Town is fortunate to have such a practical weapon at their disposal. However…Thomas is the only man (he has 111; the next best is 84) to have more than 100 non-set piece crosses this season. On a per-90-minute basis, he greatly outperformed Ryan Giles, who finished first last season, even though he finished third on a raw basis. Prior to that, the team once again topped the standings.

So many crosses, so little help in open play…It does seem to imply that Town is not getting much benefit out of Thomas being the most crooked player in the Championship, doesn’t it? (That’s not to be confused with the Championship’s crossest player, although he’s probably that too). Of course, some of that may have to do with the characteristics of Town’s center-forwards, but we’re talking about what they have right now, so the point is still valid at least through January.

All of this is a very long way of saying that, in the long run, it might not be a bad thing for Thomas to play a role that required him to consider other options besides always going for the cross – even if it’s just a role he fills occasionally rather than on a regular basis. Thomas’ playing might be improved by being a little more judicious about when he crosses and when he looks to do something different, which would also help Town become less monolithic in the last third.

Warnock appeared to concur as well, as he stated in the preseason that he preferred Thomas to come inside and look for the shot more frequently than to always go outside. We also know he can thread a pass; one example is the beautiful pass he made to set up Danny Ward for a goal against Birmingham at the start of last season. However, he rarely finds himself in a position to do so.

Although we criticized Moore for adjusting his lineup and using players out of position against Birmingham, we believe Thomas at 10 may be worth more investigation. Because Koroma and especially Burgzorg just won’t pass the ball, attempting them there would be a waste of time. The other obvious options for that role (Jack Rudoni, Brahima Diarra, or Ben Wiles) haven’t given Town enough goals or chances, either.

Although Thomas may still occasionally drift outside from position 10, repositioning him also makes room for Tom Edwards to come into the side. Moore suggested during the game that the Stoke loanee needed to regain his fitness after being sidelined for a while by Warnock, but Moore seemed to have a more optimistic outlook on Edwards’ future.

Wiles, the club’s major summer signing, was the main loser from the shift as he was benched for the first time ever. We’re interested to watch how the competition for spots plays out after the international break, but our suspicion is that Thomas will be used in a similar manner in contests when Moore values Wiles’ work rate over Thomas’ originality.

It’s possible that Danny Ward will be just as crucial to Darren Moore as he was to Neil Warnock.

I’m sorry to keep bringing it up, but Town really do need a true striker in the lineup. Koroma and Burgzorg were ineffective throughout, but particularly as a pair, and Town’s stronger introductions occurred around the time that Harratt was introduced in lieu of Koroma.

If Town is going to play a front two, we must return to the idea that it would be more natural to pair Danny Ward, Kyle Hudlin, or Kyle Harratt with Pat Jones, Koroma, or Burgzorg; the former group’s natural instincts as strikers would naturally give the latter group’s rawer flair and unpredictability better space and finishing. Moore might very well become the lone striker if he so chooses by also playing as a pure striker. Ward is undoubtedly the most experienced of the pure center-forwards, despite having his share of critics.

Even with Ward nearing full fitness, it’s clear that Moore and Town are eagerly anticipating the start of the January transfer window so they can complete the tasks they were unable to complete in the summer. They may also use the opportunity to bring back Jordan Rhodes, who is currently on loan at Blackpool and has six wins in seven games after enjoying a brief run of exceptional play for Sheffield Wednesday under Moore a few years ago.