Five conclusions: Shambolic Huddersfield Town nowhere near good enough for top six

Plymouth Argyle showed exactly what a play-off contender looks like, and Liam Manning’s side were a long way from that standard

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.