Huddersfield Town need to be the hunter and not the hunted in pivotal run

Lee Grant’s Terriers meet four teams above them in League One in the space of just three weeks, with a tricky Vertu Trophy assignment also on the agenda

When the fixtures came out in June, it was easy to identify October and November as the toughest run Lee Grant’s side were likely to face this season.

If things had worked out how they looked on paper — and if the international breaks had not caused a couple of those games to be moved — Huddersfield Town would be out of the woods already and looking forward to a more inviting run-up to Christmas.

But that’s rarely how things work. Thanks to international postponements, the current shape of the table, and Town’s own recent losing streak, the Terriers remain right in the thick of what could be their toughest stretch of the campaign.

This difficult period didn’t start well. Both Stockport and Bolton claimed victory at the Accu Stadium, with a defeat to Wycombe making things worse.

Building on the improvement Town showed before the international break, and doing it against better sides than bottom-of-the-table Plymouth, isn’t just vital for short-term confidence: it could have a pivotal impact on where they finish at the end of the season.