Five conclusions: How Huddersfield Town sorted themselves out to beat Peterborough

Lee Grant's double substitution changed the game in the Terriers' favour as they came from behind to beat the struggling Posh

1. Two_spider-men.jpg

There’s a lot of similarities in the way Huddersfield Town and Peterborough United try to play: high press, playing out from the back. Both sides have also had extremely busy summer transfer windows. The difference is that Huddersfield have generally been really good with some bad bits while Peterborough have been really bad with some good bits.

So really, the way this game played out shouldn’t really have been a surprise. The first half hour was so sterile you could have happily performed major operations with it, had it not been so lacking in any kind of incisiveness altogether.

Though neither side managed a shot, Town were the weaker side in that period. They kept giving the away in stilly areas, and were slow to react when Peterborough did the same — aside from Joe Taylor’s tireless efforts up top.

It’s a tune we’ve played before, so we’ll spare you the full diatribe again (we have a lot more detail on why it happened on this occasion in a moment), but poor first halves really are a running theme for Huddersfield Town this season.

Thankfully, good second halves have also been an identifiable coda for this side, and by Darren Ferguson’s own admission, where Peterborough’s substitutions made them weaker, Huddersfield’s made them stronger. Significantly so.

2. Leo Castledine and Will Alves changed the approach and changed the game

Leo Grant accepted his share of the blame for what went wrong tactically in the first half, saying that he had given his side some instructions he felt had not been especially helpful to the side. We can’t help but wonder if unspoken in that, so as not to throw his players under the boss, was ‘and I got my initial selection wrong’.

After correcting that at the break, Town looked much more dangerous…though of course we’ll never know whether that would have been the case if they had not also had the wake-up call of going a goal behind.

Realistically, though, that improvement only really happened after young loanees Leo Castledine and Will Alves came on in a double substitution for Ben Wiles and Ruben Roosken.