Huddersfield Town 1 - West Bromwich Albion 4

Date:	Sunday 10th March 2024
Competition:	Sky Bet Championship
Huddersfield: 4.2
WBA: 6.4	(4-2-3-1) Palmer 6.0, Furlong 6.0 (Pieters, 80 5.4), Kipré 5.7, Bartley 6.6 (Ajayi, 75 6.1), Reach 5.1, Yokuslu 7.0, Mowatt 6.6, Wallace 5.2 (Thomas-Asante, 75 4.7), Diangana 4.9, Johnston 8.2 (Swift, 74 5.3), Weimann 4.7 (Fellows, 57 6.5) Unused subs: Griffiths, Chalobah, M'Vila, Ávila Gordón Manager: Carlos Corberán 6.7
Scorers:	Johnston (51, 73), Bartley (60), Yokuslu (66)
Referee:	David Webb 6.1
Attendance:	19,383 Home Fans 3.8 Away Fans 7.7

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Ratings submitted so far: 15

oshawabaggie:

Gobsmacked. The first 45 minutes was the worst I've seen for years. The second half - brilliant. Mikey Johnston - what a signing.

Yokuslu goal - strike of the season. Palmer redeemed himself with 3 brilliant stops.

A request: Pleeeeze stop the slow passing across the box - just asking for trouble.

What a turnaround!!

Ancient Baggie:

Well hopefully the penny will drop after that. First half was awful, just like QPR we kept trying to play in all the wrong areas and were lucky to go in only one down, we had 68% possession and I can't really remember us having a shot at goal.

Second half we got the ball forward quicker, stopped going sideways and backwards at every opportunity and looked like we could score every time we went forward. Some great goals and performances to get people on their feet.

Johnston is on fire (reminds me of Willie back in the 70's). Massive 3 points. Hopefully we can keep everyone fit and even get a few back from injury after the international break. COYB

Brendan Clegg:

No problem with the lineup for me, it needed freshening up.

But this really was a game of 2 halves.

First half - way too casual, lacking intensity, trying to take the sting out of the game but that leading to complacency. Huddersfield pressed us well but there was just no urgency and our decision making was woeful. Not to single him out but Wallace gave a couple of prime examples- walloping cross field passes to nobody or playing the ball into congested areas when a simple pass was on.

Huddersfield deserved their lead although it was a very soft goal for us. Sloppy possession, weak defending and it went under Palmer.

That said - I thought they looked poor, we just didn’t test them.

That changed at HT when CC put Jed up top in a 4-4-2 with Grady wide right and we got right at them.

We started running riot. First a great break saw MJ equalise following good Weimann work.

Palmer then made a vital great save to atone for earlier.

Bartley bundled home a second.

Yok hit an Exocet missile for our third and MJ showed great feet to scurry away and clip in a 4th from a tight angle.

It could’ve been more and Palmer also made another couple of class stops.

We blew them away and I’d love to see us go for it like this more often.

Our bench looked really strong with more to come. If we can round off this run of games with a win next week it’ll have been a monster period for us.

Palmer - 6 Redeemed himself again.
Furlong - 6 His best spell of form for us ever, coinciding with him being a yellow card tightrope.
Bartley - 7 Leadership back on show
Kipre - 6 Generally strong, they had too many chances though
Reach - 6 I think he keeps the ball really well in this role and did a solid job for us, just pace is a worry.
Yok - 7 Better after the break and warra goal
Mowatt - 6 Also improved after. Was better in a 2!
Wallace - 6 Lots of running and effort. Some key moments but a first half to forget.
Grady - 6 Same, couldn’t hold it well enough early but came into it well.
MJ - 8 All sorts of goals. Quick feet. Quick brain. I can’t imagine we’ve any chance of keeping him. What were Celtic doing loaning him out?
Weimann - 6 Did a job, contributed to it.

I thought all the subs were 6s. They all looked like they were good enough to start - bodes very well!

Kev Buckley:

A game of two, John Smith's, halves

Albion surely headed to Huddersfield, who had dropped into the bottom three the previous day, without needing to worry about whether their opposition needed to be treated with the respect that QPR's beating table-toppers Leicester had clearly seen them treated with, moreover, with most of the previous day's results having worked for us, they would have travelled with the knowledge that a win at the John Smith's would restore the five point gap to the sides in seventh and below: all the more reason to "go for it" then.

As it was, Albion approached the first half as though a point would have guaranteed them automatic promotion, so much so that Weimann, nominally playing as the "line leader" - Fellows making way, with Wallace moving to the right wing - may not even have touched the ball. He certainly didn't have a shot on target, because no-one in the side did, mainly as a result of the majority of Albion's possession football not seeing the ball leave our half, or if it did, quickly being passed back across the half-way line.

As the half hour approached, Wallace would fail to win a loose ball just inside his own half - where else ? - and Huddersfield quickly played the ball to a player on the right-side of our narrow back four. That player dribbled outside Furlong and into enough space to shoot back across the box, the ball going under Palmer.

Unlike previous games, however, going behind again didn't spark the Albion into action, and the half ended with us seemingly accepting the one-goal deficit.

Things seemed to pick up in the second half though, first as Furlong, doing his usual near-post run at a corner, flashed a header across the face, and then, as Wallace had "a dig" from outside the box and central, which sadly the Huddersfield keeper didn't spill.

Shortly after that, Furlong played a ball into space behind the Huddersfield back line and Weimann, on the right wing and possibly offside, ran onto it, advanced to the bye-line, and pulled it back for Johnston to finish.

Presumably, having seen what Weimann could do, when doing what Fellows had been doing in recent games, Corberan must have realised that he had the "real thing" on the bench, and quickly made that swap.

On the hour, an Albion corner was cleared but Wallace chanced his arm again, the shot resulting in some pin-ball in the six-yard box which Bartley, who had replaced Pieters in the back line from the off, eventually bundled home.

Unlike previous games, however, going ahead didn't see the Albion stop attacking and even though one of Johnston's by now trademark runs inside from the left, five minutes later, saw him lose control of the ball, Yokuslu decided to try and emulate Wallace, but outdid his skipper by letting off an absolute piledriver that flew into the net.

It didn't stop there. Johnston scored an identikit goal to the home side's - receiving the ball on the right edge of their box, dribbling outside his man and then beating the keeper, between his legs, with the shot.

He was almost immediately replaced by Swift, with BTA for Wallace and Ajayi for Bartley making up the numbers in Corberan's de rigueur, triple substitution at around seventy minutes or so,

Those changes pretty much stemmed the Albion tide, although we still had the bizarre sight of right-back cover, Pipa, remaining on the bench as left-back cover, Pieters, was introduced for right-back Furlong, with ten still to go, but maybe Corberan had simply seen enough attacking by then, to know that his team are capable of it, should he decide to ask them to do so in future.