Five conclusions: Huddersfield Town improvement still probably too little, too late

The Terriers were fine against play-off rivals Reading, but fine rarely cuts it at this stage of the season

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.