Huddersfield Town head to The Stadium of Light on Tuesday night for a League Cup game with Premier League new boys, Sunderland. Many fans will find it impossible to get excited about this game or any cup game, but I really enjoyed our game in the first round against Leicester so I’m optimistic this game will be an entertaining watch too.
While the league is obviously Town’s priority this season, these games in the cup give an opportunity to players that have had limited minutes on the pitch so far and knockout football is good fun to watch. This game also has the added incentive of testing ourselves against a Premier League team, even if it is mostly the fringe players they field.
Here are a few of my thoughts before this game…
Will Lee Grant stick to his principles?
Principles haven’t existed since 2009. They went into administration, and now they only live on as a hollow imitation of their former self in a concession in Debenhams. And while I’m talking about a highstreet fashion shop, actual principles are pretty hard to find these days too. So it’ll be interesting to see if Lee Grant sticks to his footballing principles in this game and sets Town up to play the way he wants them to play regardless of the opposition.
While it wasn’t so long ago we were competing with Sunderland in the Championship, we’re now in League One and they’re in the Premier League. That means they should keep hold of the ball better than League One teams when we press them and should be better at getting in behind us if we play too high up the field. I also think they’ll be better drilled at putting pressure on us if we play it out from the back and could force errors from any short passing we do around our own penalty area.
The standard approach to take when competing against a team two leagues above you is to keep things tight, make it a battle and try to nick a goal on the break or at a set piece. This has the advantage of keeping you in the game for longer and probably has a higher success rate. But it’s also a bit dull to watch and in a cup game, you really should try to win rather than just hang on.
Lee Grant talks about “wanting to be us” in games, by which he means sticking to the Plan A that he’s drilled into the team over preseason. There’s some flexibility in the system to play a bit differently against different opponents but there are some fundamentals, like passing it out short from the goalkeeper, closing down space, trying to move the ball forward quickly and getting stuck into battles. If Sunderland have a genuine Premier League quality squad, we may be walking into a punch by playing this way but I get the feeling that Lee Grant won’t change anyway.
Is another upset on the cards?
In the last round we beat Leicester on penalties and it would be classed as an upset, given we finished mid-table in League One last season and they were in the relegation zone of the Premier League. Now taking on a newly promoted Premier League team sets up the possibility of claiming another scalp from a higher division. It feels galling to consider beating Leicester or Sunderland an upset, as I don’t consider either to be much bigger than Town but our current lowly status means it is an upset if we beat a team higher up the pyramid.
As for whether we can cause an upset, I would say there are a few pointers that we at least have a chance in this game:
Sunderland are only two games into their season and Town have now played six games. This means that we’re already in a rhythm of playing games and preseason rustiness is now gone. Sunderland’s players, particularly their fringe ones, are most likely still easing themselves into the season and might not be at 100% yet.
Winning this game would mean a lot more to Town than Sunderland, because Premier League survival will be all they care about this season and cup runs can be a distraction from this aim. I completely disagree with this mindset though, as Sunderland have got a lot of drudgery ahead in the Premier League, so the cup could give them a welcome distraction from getting beaten (nearly) every week in the top flight.
Despite being a League One team, Town’s squad is probably more like a bottom end of the Championship when it comes to quality. With Sunderland only just leaving the Championship, the gulf in quality might not be as big as it seems. Particularly if they give the night off to players like Granit Xhaka.
Town can go into this game as underdogs and play with the freedom of having nothing to lose. If we give it a good go and lose, nobody will bat an eyelid. But Sunderland losing to League One opposition has the potential for embarrassment to Sunderland which may make them freeze up and be reluctant to take too many risks.
Will Gooch get a warm welcome?
Gooch’s history with Sunderland and being a current Huddersfield Town player means he’ll go into this game finding himself in the middle between two important things: his current employer and the team he’s played 247 games for. T’aint bad going to have racked up so many games for one club in this day and age.
So I’ll be curious to see what sort of reception he gets from his old fans at the Stadium of Light. Online, there is nothing but affection for him from Mackems, as he seems to be very well liked. In the stadium, when he’s playing for another team, the story might be different though.
Gooch is only 6 games into his Huddersfield Town spell and I already love him as a player and a personality. He’s 100% committed and has a positive energy that’s enjoyable to watch. So I suspect that he’ll have created a stronger emotional connection with the Sunderland faithful over his time there and they’ll hopefully give him a warm reception. Though if they do turn on him, I hope he uses that as fuel to fire him into a good performance.
Gooch was born in America but has English and Irish passports, so he has a pretty unusual hybrid accent which travels around the globe. It’s not as bad as Mark Fotheringham’s German and Scottish combination but it’s still quite hard to place when you hear him talk. Though, if you get past his accent, he speaks very well when interviewed. The discussion he had below with an American TV station was interesting, as the presenter was trying to bait him into knocking Huddersfield (by comparing it to Santa Cruz, where he’s originally from) and Gooch bats the question away without engaging in the cynical premise. He also talks up Da Sandros as a good place to eat around Huddersfield, in some awkward attempted banter from the host.
Could some players force their way into Saturday’s starting XI?
I’ll publish my full team prediction on Tuesday morning, but it’s fairly likely we’ll see a host of changes for this game. Lee Grant made nine changes for Leicester in the previous round and we’ve been playing two games a week for a good few weeks now, so resting players will be even more on his mind.
The good news is that players like Leo Castledine, Marcus McGuane, David Kasumu and even Joe Taylor have not been able to play as many minutes as they’d like in the league despite the fact all of those players will expect to be playing most weeks. So the cup is a chance to give these fringe players a chance to show what they can do and push their way into Lee Grant’s thinking for the League One starting eleven.
There are also youngsters like Cameron Ashia, Jay Sway and Dan Vost who have featured in preseason a lot and trained with the first team consistently, so will hope to either push into the first team set up properly or be given the opportunity to go out on loan.
I’m most interested in getting a good look at McGuane and Castledine in this game as both arrived late in preseason and have had limited opportunities due to needing time to get up to speed. We saw Castledine’s great pace and incredible recovery tackle against Doncaster last week, and he looks to have good movement off the ball but I don’t think we’ve seen the full range of his talent yet. Marcus McGuane has had even fewer minutes than Castledine, with his sole appearance coming against Blackpool, which was an unusual game to make your debut in. I’m hoping he’ll get a good run out in this game and we can see what he can do.
UPDATE: Forget what I said about McGuane. The club published their preview video after I clicked publish and have confirmed he’s had a groin niggle and won’t be featuring in the Sunderland game and will probably be out for a little while.