Five conclusions: Huddersfield Town's soft underbelly exposed again vs Blackpool

The Terriers once again fell well short on effort, quality and above all else, basic fundamentals

1. It’s awfully early to be saying ‘same old problems’, and yet…

Sluggish, sloppy, wasteful, with a midfield that would put Jack Griffin to shame and a capacity for making stupid mistakes in the wrong areas of the pitch.

That’s Huddersfield Town all over right now. We said last time out that Bolton was the anomaly in their recent run of form, and boy was it. That’s five losses out of six in all competitions, and three out of four in the league.

Michael Duff demanded a response to Town’s awful showing against Northampton on Saturday. Steve Bruce expected them to provide one. They did nothing of the sort.

Both sides had two big chances in this game, with Town making hard work of creating theirs having already gifted Blackpool a duo that they gleefully took.

This is a million miles from good enough for a team hoping to nudge towards the play-offs, let alone one that supposedly has aspirations of achieving automatic promotion. On this form and this trajectory, and with this upcoming fixture list, you fear that things will continue to get worse before they get better — if they do at all.

We’d like to think that was melodramatic, but it’s up to Town to prove otherwise. We can only go on the evidence before us, all of which points to the notion they are not a dominant side who struggle against certain opponents. Instead, they are an inept side who can only succeed against certain opponents.

Duff cautioned from day one that this might happen, but their inability to break down even basic defences has been worse than he could have anticipated.