1. Nobody took a vacation this time (except Wimbledon)

Ah, so that’s what it’s like to be on the other side of one of those end-of-season fixtures.

This was last weekend’s game all over again, only with Huddersfield Town playing the Mansfield role for the day against a Wimbledon team that secured survival last weekend, couldn’t care less anymore, and just wanted the final whistle to call time on their campaign.

The away fans were determined to provide the entertainment all on their own: the fancy dress, the chants of “Bromley away”, the two- or three-minute “oohhhhhhhhh” in the build-up to a Wimbledon goal kick that was delayed by an injury and a substitution. They even got the stewards dancing along with them at points.

Thankfully, those who made the trip got a carnival to enjoy on the pitch, too.

Town were free and loose in all the ways you’d want them to be, even if the circumstances were less than ideal. This was their biggest away win since they pumped Cambridge by the same scoreline 18 months ago.

Martin Drury’s quiet fury after the game was thoroughly understandable — very much an ‘of all the occasions to suddenly remember how to play football and ease to a confident victory, you choose the one when it doesn’t bloody matter’ kind of vibe.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Sod it, though. We’ve endured enough misery and prodded at enough of Town’s many flaws this season, especially over the last fortnight — and lucky you, you’ll be getting our parting verdict on the lot straight to your inbox shortly.

It absolves nothing about this campaign, obviously, but sometimes it’s fine for football to be fun in its own right. That’s what Town delivered for their fans here.

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1. Huddersfield Town once again have a battle on their hands to win the fans back

We doubt that person made it to the final whistle. Very few people did.

The sight of the Cowshed Loyal standing up en masse and departing for beers after Mansfield’s fourth goal in the 65th minute was a clearer message than any pre-planned protest with banners and chants could possibly have sent.

Like the rest of the crowd, they’d turned up despite the disappointments of the past few weeks and the confirmation on Tuesday night that Town would indeed miss out on the play-offs. Their intention, we presume, had been to stay until the end of the final game of the season to see the players off on their customary lap around the pitch.

Instead, by the time the players and staff started walking around the stadium with their families, there was just a single row or two of the most forgiving die-hards and kids waiting at the front of every stand. Even Jon Stead said afterwards that he couldn’t blame them.

It was as bleak and dispiriting a way to end a campaign as we have ever seen — and there’s still one game left to play.

Town shouldn’t be playing dead rubbers in April and May unless they already have promotion in the bag. Just phone up Wimbledon and see if they fancy putting on a panto or something instead, we say. (Oh no they don’t.)

The point that scene made was pretty serious. With one exception, Huddersfield Town have offered nothing but failure for eight years in a row. Still the fans have continued to buy season tickets in their thousands, take a big following away, and stand by the club when it would have been easy and forgivable to simply give up and wait for the good times to return.

But everyone has a breaking point, and this season might just have been it for many fans. A third season in League One for a club that was in the Premier League seven years ago is quite the decline, and there have been few signs that things are going to get any better. It’s been a series of promises of bread tomorrow only for the club to deliver crumbs.

Since the Kevin Nagle era began less than three years ago, Town have had six permanent managers, plus two reasonably lengthy caretaker spells. What’s more, they’ve fielded 71 different players in league games. Plenty of money has been spent on transfers and player wages, particularly by the standards of the third tier.

The result has been a relegation and two seasons in League One that have ended with mid-table finishes.

After a year, you could say they needed time to reset after drifting through a difficult and uncertain period just before the takeover.

After the second year, you could say Town had too many players they couldn’t move on and just needed to wait it out.

After three seasons, though, there really is no excuse. Martin Drury said as much on Friday afternoon.

“Excuses will land us in the exact same position in 12 months,” the interim head coach said. “Anyone who’s got an excuse needs to leave the club.”

Drury was talking about the players, but the same point applies up and down the hierarchy.

Kevin Nagle doubled down on this position around an hour after the final whistle on Saturday, writing: “No more flashy promises. After this statement, no more flashy words.

“We, starting with myself, David Threlfall-Sykes, and our staff, will work day and night this offseason to get it right.

“In three years, I’ve come to know the football you want to see. And it’s the same football I want to see: big, physical, front footed, aggressive, and able to hold leads late in the match.“

If Town are genuinely willing to face up to their failures, then good. That’s all you can ask for. But they’re going to have to be honest with themselves about what’s gone wrong, and find a way to fix it.

The fans are tired of waiting.

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1. History repeats itself: first as tragedy, second as farce, third as really bloody annoying​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

3-1 up against ten men with 13 minutes plus stoppage time to play, and still they found a way to blow it.

The best way to enjoy Huddersfield Town at this point may well be to treat their games like watching an episode of Blackadder.

No matter how cunning their plan might be, you know there is simply no way for our hero to win. After all, the entire premise of their situation — in Town’s case, that they’re not quite good enough to deserve a play-off place — would then be ruined. But you also need our hero to come within touching distance of victory, only to have it snatched away in increasingly unlikely fashion and returned to their status quo, otherwise all the dramatic tension is ruined.

It’s taken some doing, but Town have managed to maintain the ideal conditions for farce. They’ve been destined for weeks to miss out on the play-offs, yet Stevenage have managed to take just four points from their past three games and give Town hope of making up the three-point gap that existed after Easter weekend.

And so, just to make sure they didn’t do that, Town had to find a way to earn just three points in the same time, despite leading in the 100th minute of the first game, the 94th minute of the second, and the 100th minute of the third.

Even so, any comic formula wears thin over time, and by now it’s become too predictable to be funny. Once Bolton got it back to 3-2, you could see the final punchline from a mile away.

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1. Deja vu, deja vu

A very good performance. An excellent Ryan Ledson goal. Creating the best chances in the game despite having less possession. The heartbreak of an injury time equaliser.

It was all just too familiar, or at least the last part was. For the second time in four days, Huddersfield Town should have won a game that would have put them firmly back in the race for the top six. For the second time in four days, they came away with a point that does little for them.

For our money, this result and the late deprivation of two precious points was far less egregious than against Wycombe on Saturday.

Town had an early goal ruled out for a marginal offside against Bali Mumba. They were denied multiple times by excellent goalkeeping from Cardiff’s Nathan Trott. They struck the woodwork twice. They had a goal-bound effort blocked by their own player. They conceded a 96th minute goal that should, by rights, have been ruled out for offside.

If Town had been playing like this ten games ago, we would have found it encouraging. These two outings against Wycombe and Cardiff are the best performances they’ve produced in 2026, and two of the best they have managed all season.

On top of that, if you’d been offered a point against Cardiff at the time, you’d probably have graciously accepted it; there were plenty more winnable games to be played in the interim, after all.

But ’winnable’ didn’t turn out to be the same as ‘won’. Town have taken just 16 points from their past 13 league games, with three wins, six draws and four defeats.

Plenty of those results featured awful performances. Still, it says something that even when Town have been vastly improved, and playing some of their best football of the season, they haven’t been able to put games to bed.

If they had, they would be sixth now. They’d still be holding out hope that Stockport or Stevenage would stumble in their remaining games, yes, but in the picture either way.

This might well have been Town’s last chance to make the seemingly impossible seem possible again.

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1. The good, the bad and the ugly

You have to give credit where it’s due: it was a tremendous effort from all involved to join in the centenary celebration of Huddersfield Town’s third league title in a row by contriving to fill the scoreboard with threes.

We spent much of the game doing this on a continuous loop:

Town were mostly good, except when they weren’t. It was staggering that they went in a goal down after missing at least three clear-cut chances: Radinio Balker heading wide twice, and Alfie May somehow contriving to slip after rounding the keeper and taking the ball too wide.

Wycombe’s goal on the counter-attack came against the run of play, and you suspect it was the exact kind of goal Michael Duff had planned for his side to score.

Town had been good enough that a fightback felt inevitable, though, and another belter from Ryan Ledson got things started. Marcus Harness completed the turnaround.

Going into the 90th minute, Town were 2-1 up. You would expect them to win the game from there.

In the 96th minute, having conceded an equaliser, Harness put Town ahead again. You would most certainly expect them to win the game from there. But of course, they didn’t.

With everything that was on the line, watching them fluff their lines once again was incredibly frustrating. Town had done more than enough to deserve to win the game with their best attacking performance in months. If they had come away with a 5-1 victory, Wycombe would genuinely have had little to complain about.

Still, it’s hard to extend much credit for the performance when the three points were so important in the circumstances, so many chances went begging, and the goals Town ultimately conceded were so avoidable. Given that Wycombe also hit the post in injury time at 2-2, Town were arguably lucky to get away with a draw in the end.

Because we’re at that stage of the season, we’ve decided this week to do two shorter podcasts this week — one for each game — rather than one long one as usual. Only our paying backers get access to the We Are Terriers podcast, so sign up now if you’ve not already!

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1. Normal business resumes: Huddersfield Town are ridiculous again

Years ago, when I was on the Yorkshire circuit for the Football League Paper, I always said I liked doing League One the most. Although some games were dull, every team in the division was flawed enough that they often produced loopy games of football that didn’t make sense.

It turns out that is much less fun when you’re following one team consistently and would generally prefer they do well, but they keep finding ridiculous ways to drop points despite themselves.

Nonetheless, I was almost disappointed after the Reading game that it turned out to be a normal game of football, because it meant there was little left to do in reaction but shrug at a 1-1 draw.

Town certainly made up for that lack of drama here. The significantly extended period of added time contained more action and excitement than we’ve seen for months. And has there ever been a later winner in the club’s history than Ledson’s deflected strike in the 16th minute of added time? Answers on a postcard, please.

Can we pretend it was good? No. Was it great fun in the end anyway? Yes.

2. We’re not sure what else Town expected from that selection in the first half

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1. Two points dropped or one point gained?

When BBC Radio Leeds’ Katherine Hannah mentioned that there were seven games left to play at Thursday’s press conference, Jon Stead reminded her that there were ten games still on the board. It was a great soundbite, and exactly the kind of confidence that fans will have wanted to hear.

But it was never going to amount to much more if Town couldn’t back it up on the pitch. On the day, they did and they didn’t.

The first half, in particular, was a notable improvement over what we have seen from Town for a couple of months now, the first half against Lincoln aside. Yet Town failed to press home their dominance with a goal, conceded a needless penalty, and had to wait until the end of an uneventful second half to finally rescue a point.

Town didn’t deserve to lose. We’re not convinced they deserved to win either. But there is no doubt in our mind that they should have won, given that Reading scored their penalty off the back of their only dangerous attack of the game — and even then they needed a helping hand from Town to do so.

Martin Drury commented after the game that if it was possible to get two points from a game of football, that’s probably what Town deserved, which seems broadly fair to us.

All in all, we got something you don’t see every day: a Huddersfield Town game that felt like a normal football match. That meant it was hard to leave the game with anything other than a sense of ambivalence. It was fine at a time when Town need to be more than just fine.

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1. That’s what a good team looks like (and obviously we don’t mean Huddersfield Town)

Momentum can be a wonderful thing. Plymouth started the day behind the Terriers in the table, but you wouldn’t have thought it from the vibe around Home Park. This is, after all, a team that started 2026 in the relegation zone and has since become — by the objective measure of the league table since then — the second-best team in League One.

Even after Plymouth went a goal down, the reaction said, this is a temporary setback. And it was, because they were good and Huddersfield Town were terrible.

A clearly pissed-off Liam Manning made no attempt to defend the performance, apologising to the fans and admitting his side didn’t deserve to be 1-0 up at half-time. That scoreline owed everything to Cameron Humphreys’ superb goal and Lee Nicholls’ multiple interventions in the Town net.

As such, it would be too simple to point to the keeper’s departure with a head injury as a turning point in the game.

Town were so far off the pace that they were going to concede eventually. In the end, they made it pathetically easy for Plymouth to score.

We’re going to talk about what went wrong in more detail, but the simplest truth is this: Huddersfield Town are nowhere near good enough to be in the top six.

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1. Mixed emotions, but overall more encouraging than anything

On the final whistle, two Huddersfield Town fans at the top of the Riverside Stand erupted into boos. They were quickly told to shut up. The majority of the stadium instead opted to applaud the Terriers off the pitch, despite the disappointment of conceding a 93rd-minute equaliser.

Town’s inability to see out five more minutes and take the full three points means they’ve dropped out of the top six, leaving them with just nine points from their past eight games. That is nothing like the kind of form that is going to get them back into the play-off places before the end of the season.

But the damage was really done by Town having dropped points against Blackpool, Stevenage, Doncaster, Wigan and Port Vale — most of whom are firmly involved in the relegation fight towards the bottom of the table.

Lincoln were the better side for two-thirds of the game, and will feel the late equaliser was the very least they deserved.

But 29 minutes of Town being on top against a side who came into this game with 16 wins, five draws and no defeats from their past 21 league games was beyond any reasonable expectation based on their awful recent performances. Ryan Hardie’s opener was the first goal a Town player had scored since the Scot notched the winner against Barnsley, back when the shops were still selling Valentine’s Day merchandise at knockdown prices.

A lot of noise was made about Town’s inability to get the job done at bottom-placed Port Vale at the weekend, so it’s only fair that we acknowledge the reverse here.

Town are the first side to score twice against Lincoln since Luton 12 games before. They’re only the second side to get a point out of them in that time too, with third-placed Bolton being the other. Since their last defeat in all competitions — at home to Town in the EFL Trophy in early December — Lincoln have handily beaten Bradford, Plymouth, Cardiff (twice) and Stockport (twice).

After going 2-0 up inside 20 minutes, would you have liked Town to see out the win, regardless of the opposition? Yes, and there’s an argument to be made that they invited too much pressure on themselves in the second half.

But would you have taken a point from this game before kick-off? Also yes.

Was this a significantly better performance than we’ve seen out of Town in the past six weeks? Yes again.

The late equaliser stopped this from being the kind of result that makes you say, ‘This is where it all turns around for them’. But it was, at long last, a reason to start wondering if there’s still hope after all.

There are areas for improvement, naturally, but given where Town have been recently, we’re inclined to take that.

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1. The sad thing is that’s exactly what we expected from Huddersfield Town

This was never going to be a repeat of the 5-0 walkover on Boxing Day, and we didn’t expect it to be.

But nor did we expect that Town would be convincing, or that they would win, or that they would even score, because we’ve been given so little evidence over the past six games that this would be the case.

A Town player has scored in just one of their past six games, after all. Even if we count Rotherham’s own goal, the last couple of times Town had such a poor run of goalscoring form was when they were as bad as we have ever seen them: in that awful run in April last year, when the players had given up entirely; and under Darren Moore in the 2023/24 Championship relegation season, when they were left with Kyle Hudlin as their best centre-forward option.

Even so, we had hoped that Town would prove us wrong. There were moments where it looked like they might: if Josh Feeney’s header against the crossbar had been four inches lower, and/or a near-own goal hadn’t been hastily cleared of the line later in the first half, we’d be saying, ‘well, it still wasn’t great, but it’s a start’. There were some things we took encouragement from in the performance.

But we don’t have any greater condemnation of Town’s inability to get the job done here than the words of Port Vale boss Jon Brady after the game.

“I’ve got four centre-backs out. I’ve got eight [players] out altogether,” he said. “We’ve put a left wing-back in at left-sided centre-half, we’ve put a left-sided centre-half in the middle. Taylor Magloire breaks his nose in the first 20 minutes and it’s all over his face, and he pulls himself off the floor, knowing we’ve got nothing else, blood streaming out, and he plays on.

“We had one training session with that back line training what we were going to do, and we got into a really good rhythm [in the] second half on that pitch, which is a joke to try to play on, to be honest. It really is … playing on this pitch week in, week out is breaking the players. That’s a fact.”

He went on: “We’ve played five games to [Huddersfield’s] two over the last two weeks, so for us to be the stronger team towards the end of the game, I have to praise the boys, no matter how the next couple go.”

To all of that we would add: Port Vale are bottom of the league.

We mean no disrespect in pointing that out. The improvement in Vale’s defensive record over the past few weeks has been remarkable, even if they’re still struggling to score goals. All this has come too late in the season for them to stay up, but they‘ve won against Championship and Premier League opposition in the FA Cup over the past ten days.

Even with all that considered, this was still a game that Huddersfield Town could really, really have done with winning.

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1. Three points is three points, but that performance…

This is the first time we’ve come away from a Huddersfield Town victory that felt more like a defeat. The game was dire. We couldn’t even find fault with the side getting booed off on the final whistle.

Look, it’s a win, and in general you take them whatever the circumstances. If Town do the same thing against, say, Lincoln or Cardiff in the next couple of home games, we doubt anybody will mind too much, assuming they can endure another 90 minutes of boredom.

There’s a way this can still turn out for the best, and we’ll all look back on this match and say, Well, they were terrible, but at least they got back to winning ways.

It is, after all, 13 points from a possible 15 at home under Liam Manning. If Town make the top six, this is likely to be one of the main reasons. We have to reluctantly concede that the three points they notched up here played their part.

The problem is that Rotherham were just as bad — probably a little bit better, for most of the game — and they’re in the relegation zone, having now scored just two goals in their past six league games.

The problem is that Town have been poor for the better part of a month now, with that tough run of games coming up after next weekend’s trip to Port Vale. What are we meant to take from this game to make us think Town are going to be any better against the teams above and around them in the table?

The problem, ultimately, is that there are just too many problems with Town’s work on the ball at the moment, and few signs of improvement, even against some of the weakest teams in the division.

Who knows what comes next, but one thing we know for sure is that Town have to do better.

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1. Huddersfield Town let the game get away from them

Don’t bottle it again from here, lads. That was the essential message of our midweek piece. Wigan’s long-standing status as a bogey team for Town, including a dismal performance in a 1-1 draw in December, only made this game more of a touchstone for where this side are and what kind of trajectory they’re on.

Well, that answers that, then.

We could see from the way their recent games against Luton and Stockport went that Wigan have been much improved since Gary Caldwell returned to the club a few weeks ago. As such, we weren’t expecting an easy game for the Terriers.

Still, after the hosts had the run of the first 20 minutes, Town ended up having the better chances of the first half. They simply needed that extra bit of luck on two passages of play that saw them hit the post, first through Ryan Hardie’s shot and then later through Bali Mumba’s deflected effort. Both were followed by goalline clearances to deny Alfie May and then Marcus Harness.

Just come out for the second half and keep doing more of the same, then? Surely.

But no. The crucial moment in the game, bizarrely, was a yellow card for Lasse Sorensen just before half-time. Caldwell immediately called over to Joseph Hungbo and told him to get ready to come on for the second half and target the Dane.

From there, Town ended up running scared of a side that started the day in the relegation zone. All of Town’s efforts, including those of the head coach, became about trying to contain Wigan. In the process, they failed to offer anything meaningful of their own.

It would be nice to have a team that could do two things at once, wouldn’t it? But the story of this season has been that of a side that can either score plenty of goals but can’t defend to save their lives; or an outfit that gets intimidated by the opposition, fails to take risks, and ends up getting narrowly beaten because of it.

The latter has been increasingly the case under Liam Manning, and is exactly what happened here. Even after going a goal down, Town offered little threat on the Wigan goal, aside from a Harness long shot late on.

It was pitiful to watch, and the boos from the away end at Town’s lack of quality were well-earned by the end.

It’s becoming a concerning pattern now. Town had just one 1-0 defeat in 27 league games under Lee Grant (away to Stockport), and failed to score on just three occasions. They have now done it three times in their past four league games under Manning, two of them to sides battling relegation.

That’s not good enough for a side supposedly in a promotion race. It’s also terrible to watch.

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2. Town’s set piece decline has been shocking

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1. Still work to do, but the win was the main thing

For a while, it looked like it might be the most miserable day of the season yet for Huddersfield Town.

Reading were winning away to Port Vale, and the Terriers were behind. The as-it-stands table showed Huddersfield down in seventh place, a point behind the Royals, who had a game in hand. Luton were winning and making up ground. Wycombe had won earlier in the day, too, which, given that Stevenage have an extra game in hand, was a curse in disguise.

Just to rub salt in the wounds, Bradford, Stockport and Bolton were all on course to drop points. Realistically that’s good for Town either way, but at the time only made the fact that they were losing feel like even more of a wasted opportunity.

So pretty decent, then, that injury time goals meant Reading blew it late on at Port Vale while Luton were held by Burton. The upshot is that Town now have a four-point gap to Reading and Stevenage — and while Boro’s extra game in hand means Town can’t feel too secure in that position, it’s a lot better than the alternative.

The word we’re looking for is ‘fine’ — especially after seeing Town play so poorly over the previous two games (to say nothing of the 2-2 draw with Blackpool or the Vertu Trophy exit to Doncaster), and double-especially after a poor first-half performance in this game. They got the win they needed. You can’t argue with that.

It’s also worth chucking some credit Town’s way for winning from behind for only the second time this season (and, indeed, only the fourth time in three seasons)…although if we were being a bit snide then we’d also add that they are going to have to do that plenty more if they continue to concede first, as they have in each of their past five games.

Whether this marks the beginning of a true upturn in form — the kind Town need to hold on to that top-six place — remains to be seen. Here’s why.

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1. Not good enough

Ten away defeats, a clean sheet conceded to the worst defence in the league, no shots on target since the Blackpool game, and we’ve barely even begun to look at the issues plaguing Huddersfield Town at the moment.

January, February, and March are results business months. It doesn’t have to be pretty, it doesn’t even have to be convincing, but you must keep putting points on the board. Wherever you are in the league, and whatever your aspirations are, these are the grinding weeks. Just get over the line however you can.

Town have now lost five games of football in 2026 alone, and the Valentine’s Day chocolate is still half price in the supermarket. If last season was the ‘could’ and ‘maybe’ one, this was supposed to be the ‘should’ and ‘definitely’ campaign. It’s in danger of slipping away if they don’t arrest the slide immediately.

There are too many teams in the chasing pack for at least one of them not to hit form at just the right time. There are too many teams above them who have at least found a way to make sure they don’t lose two games in a row for Town to be able to play like this. We’ll get into specifics, but to be that flat at a point in the season when they need to be ticking over as a bare minimum is a huge worry.

I questioned whether Town had momentum after the Peterborough game on our podcast. Manning’s first two games had been weird for different reasons, and then there were signs of old habits returning in the Posh victory that worried me. It’s clear that they don’t, and they’re on the edge of dropping out of the play-off places as teams begin to play the multiple games in hand around them. This isn’t how it was supposed to be.

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1. Stockport away, take two

We’ll give Huddersfield Town this: they certainly turned up at Stevenage ready for a battle. It’s just a shame they forgot they were actually there to play football.

We expected this game to be dreadful. Lunchtime kick-offs are often a bit lacking in zest at the best of times, Stevenage seem to be doing their level best not to allow any goals to happen at the Lamex Stadium whatsoever, and the potential risk of postponement due to an overly-soggy pitch was not entirely suggestive that any kind of free flowing football would be on offer.

Yet even still, this game managed to exceed our mildest expectations. Those away fans who made the trip down on the train from Leeds or Wakefield will be wishing they had stayed on past Stevenage and had a day out in London instead — although, to be fair, we imagine that is a common experience for visitors to the Hertfordshire town even at the best of times.1

That kind of game is just what Stevenage do on their own turf (another reason to feel sorry for the locals) and better teams than Town have gone there and struggled to get anything going this season.

Fine. Accepted. But the problem Town have is that this game effectively nudged Terriers fans in the ribs and said: “Hey, remember that late defeat at Stockport last month? No? Well, here is exactly that game all over again as a reminder.”

Town created next to nothing in the first half and actually nothing in the second. They defended well for most of the game but then let themselves down with a momentary loss of concentration on a set piece in the final few minutes, rendering everything they had done up until then entirely pointless.

We will repeat now what we said then: getting a point out of playing like that is sketchy enough, but to do that and lose anyway is just a colossal waste of everybody’s time.

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1. A point well rescued, and two points dropped

Where to even start on this one?

Given where Huddersfield Town were at half-time — two goals down and playing poorly — coming back to get the draw was a decent result. Funnily enough, the last time Town cancelled out a two-goal deficit was also against Blackpool, just over a year ago. Another big tick for Town showing a new level of spirit in difficult circumstances since Liam Manning’s arrival.

But then, as in every one of Manning’s four games in charge, the adversity Town had to overcome was largely self-inflicted.

They started well in the first 15 minutes, but their defending on a corner for the opening goal was dreadful. The Terriers seemingly decided there was no need to pick up any Blackpool players outside the width of the goal. Even so, Ashley Fletcher was able to apply the final touch with relative freedom. Lee Nicholls should also have done better than to let it bounce off his glove and under his body.

But hey, Ian Evatt acknowledged after the full-time whistle blew that it was a routine they had worked on for this game, and if Town had scored it, we’d probably be raving about how well-worked it was. Fine. These things happen.

The second goal, though… woof.

Town had several opportunities to stop it from happening, but Murray Wallace was outmuscled by Fletcher. Then both Wallace and Marcus McGuane failed to stop Michael Obafemi following his knockdown, after which Bali Mumba was caught unaware of the threat out wide, failing to stop the cross.

Worst of all, Karoy Anderson was allowed to get in at the back post entirely unmarked thanks to Radinio Balker apparently thinking there was no need to rush back to help the team defend. Not an ideal approach from, you know, a defender.

The late fightback meant it could have been worse. But in all candour, we were more irritated at Town for giving themselves the hill to climb than we were impressed that they did so. But perhaps that’s uncharitable.

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1. Liam Manning’s Huddersfield Town keep showing they know new tricks

Indulge me a little personal tale for a moment, if you will. Following a horrendous night’s sleep, my morning started at 10:40am, which was a bit of an issue given I was meant to be on the train down to Peterborough that departed Wakefield Westgate at 10:22.

Having booked myself on the next train at some expense and rushed in and out of the shower, some worrying engine noises and concerning electrical messages gave the drive to the station that extra bit of spice we all love in a routine drive.

Crawling into the station car park with little time to spare, I made it onto the train. After arriving at Peterborough, I promptly dropped my vape pen down a deep hole at the back of the stand where it couldn’t be retrieved. Gone for good.

It really was just one of those days, and it very nearly was for Huddersfield Town too. Safe to say that if had not got that late winner, you would now be reading perhaps the grumpiest five conclusions you ever did see — assuming I hadn’t decided to simply walk into the River Nene straight after the game.

We’re sure many of you shared the same kind of feeling of unnecessary stress on 85 minutes. Peterborough offered nothing for over 60 minutes and Town were coasting, only for the hosts to suddenly remember they were playing a game of football and fight back to 2-2. Huddersfield Town had only reverted to old tricks and dropped points late on once again, the bloody let downs.

O ye of little faith. Do you not know that Liam Manning’s Terriers have learned some new tricks?

And so it was that after dropping points in the last five minutes of a game no fewer than four times this season (including twice in the same game against Bolton) and looking like they were about to make it five, Town won a game with just moments to spare on the clock.

By our reckoning, that’s the first time Town have won a game so late on since Rhys Healey’s 94th-minute goal in a 1-0 victory over Millwall back in April 2024. (We’re open to being corrected, though, given the fact we spent all week thinking and writing that Town were playing Donny in the Trophy this Tuesday when they most certainly are not.)

Just like those red cards against Bradford and Luton, you’d almost believe Town had contrived it just to prove a point. What a ridiculous game to end an absurd eight days.

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1. Another gutsy, important, impressive win in a six-pointer

We said after the Bradford game that Town needed a repeat performance against Luton. Still, we didn’t expect it would be such a repeat. Almost everything we had to say about the weekend game applies again here, only double, given that they had the personnel disadvantage for twice as long.

Just imagine if we’d told you after the Burton game that Huddersfield Town would go on to play Bradford and Luton with ten men for over 90 combined minutes and beat them both 1-0, with Ryan Ledson scoring one of the winners from inside his own half. Absolute lunacy. Yet here we are.

The way Town managed the game after Alfie May’s divisive red card and Bojan Radulovic’s injury was outstanding. In spite of everything, not only did Town limit an out-of-sorts Luton to minimal clear-cut chances, but they also should have won it by a greater margin, spurning several presentable opportunities even with ten men.

We honestly didn’t think they had it in them. This is the first game since beating Stockport on Boxing Day 2024 that Town have won a game outright with fewer than 40% possession.

Plenty of criticism can be levelled at the players this season, but credit has to go to them for their efforts this week. In the circumstances, you could scarcely have asked for anything more.

2. About that red card, then…

Alfie May’s dismissal was contentious, but very much one of those where we can see why it was given the way it was.

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1. This was an ideal start for Liam Manning

As the man himself hinted at in his pre-match press conference, this fixture had all the makings of a perfect opening chapter for Liam Manning’s Huddersfield Town reign — but only if his side actually went out and won it. Fail to do so, and the new gaffer could scarcely have hand-picked a more unforgiving way to begin his tenure.

The concern, as ever with Town this season, was whether or not Manning would get a level of effort and concentration that Lee Grant was frustratingly unable to coax out of his side in these kinds of games.

Manning got it, and then some — and with the benefit of hindsight, even the red card oddly ended up providing a reassuring positive.

Town were brilliant on the ball throughout the first half, earning roars of appreciation from the home fans even after they wasted their first few openings. We have rarely seen Town so free-flowing and confident this season, or at least not in games like this — much to Grant’s chagrin.

Contrast that performance with 11 men with what Town did against Stockport (which is to say, basically nothing).

Then came Marcus McGuane’s dismissal, and suddenly a woeful Bradford side felt like they had a chance to get back into the game. This was precisely the kind of adversity that has caused Town to crumble in the past.

Instead, they dug in magnificently for over half an hour. Aside from a Curtis Tilt header straight at Lee Nicholls, the Terriers didn’t give their local rivals a sniff of goal, even with their numerical disadvantage.

Upon the final whistle, we were able to give Town credit for everything for which we have previously criticised them. Turning up under pressure. Maintaining their levels throughout the game. Playing with the confidence of a side that looks like they know they have more talent than the opposition. Showing real resilience and focus to see out a win in difficult circumstances.

We had hoped to see something different from Town, and half-expected that a new head coach in the dugout might force the players to go up a level in a bid to impress him — but we didn’t quite expect how thoroughly they would tick all those boxes so immediately.

As Manning stressed after the game, Town can’t now think they’ve got it all solved, but it really was the ideal way to kick off his reign.

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How many times would you expect a promoted side to concede three goals or more in a single season? Four, three, one, none? David Wagner’s famous Championship side of 2016/17 did it seven times. This was an unusually high number, which explains why they finished the season with a negative goal difference.

Lee Grant’s Huddersfield Town have already matched that mark after just 27 league games, with six of those occasions coming away from home. Doing it to Bradford and Cardiff is bad enough, but Blackpool, Wimbledon and Burton? That is utterly unacceptable.

Even with Town still in sixth place, somehow, the concept that this season might end with glory at Wembley is both the best-case scenario and a laughable notion.

With better than a one-in-four chance of a defensive calamity on that scale, expecting to survive three play-off games is optimistic at best — never mind qualifying for them.

The possibilities are:

1. These players, many of whom have arrived in the past year or so, are not as good as they appeared to be when they were signed.

2. These players are as good as their reputation and track records would suggest, but they are being led by a manager who cannot bring it out of them.

3. Both of the above.

So which is it? Let’s use the first three of our five conclusions to find an answer.

1. Option number one: the players are to blame

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