Five conclusions as Lee Grant hits point of no return at Huddersfield Town

The manager's position now looks untenable as the Terriers' poor run of form continued to a chorus of boos and angry chants from the stands

1. It’s hard to see Lee Grant recovering from this… with the fans, at least

That felt like the one. We can’t tell you definitively what will happen next or how the club board will respond, but as far as the fans are concerned, Lee Grant is done.

After the excitement of his introduction, promises of a high-octane style of play, a busy summer of what looked to be excellent recruits, and fully legitimate expectations of a title challenge, Huddersfield Town have fallen a long way short of expectations so far.

The chants from the home fans included “Lee Grant, your football is s***”, “you’re getting sacked in the morning”, and “you don’t know what you’re doing”. His decision to take off Alfie May when Town needed a winner was met with a round of boos. When Leo Castledine’s number went up as the player making way for Ben Wiles, Accu Stadium practically hit a full-on revolt.

And revolting is the word for that second-half performance. Town were cautious but fine in the first half and got their lead through a set piece goal from Murray Wallace, but after the break they were little short of rancid. Uninspired. Lacking in confidence. Another awful and avoidable goal to concede. No ideas for how to change the game either on the pitch or from the dugout.

We’ve mounted a few defences of Grant here and there so far this season; for our money, he has been let down by his players about twice as often as he himself has got his tactics or selections wrong.

But at this point it’s impossible to make excuses anymore. At least before you could say that Town were playing some good teams, had a load of injuries, and/or were in a congested run of lots of away games in succession. There was just enough there for us to hope that things could start to turn around.

That had to start this week. Four points from Northampton and Wigan was the minimum, the full six not unreasonable. Instead they have two and (though we can’t be sure at time of writing) are likely to have given up yet more points to the teams ahead of them in the table.

It would be very difficult to plead Grant’s case after a run of just 13 points from their past 13 league games, including just one win in their past six home games in the competition.

Add in that fan reaction to this performance and the fans’ ever-growing distaste for Grant’s approach and it feels like the writing might just be on the wall.