Huddersfield Town remind us of their fallibility with limp EFL Trophy exit

Bolton's 3-1 win has dumped the Terriers out of their third and final cup competition and shown they still have some way to go before they are the finished article

Well, Lasse Sorensen is back — and that’s about all the good we have to say about Huddersfield Town’s 3-1 defeat at Bolton.

This was not a team full of inexperienced kids, despite a few changes, including one that had to be reversed when Danny Ward was called back into action at the last minute thanks to an injury suffered by Jonathan Hogg during the warm-up.

Town never really got going until they were already three goals down. By that point, it’s all too easy to pretend you’re putting in the effort, like a schoolboy trying to pass off hastily-scribbled bus-seat homework as a meaningful attempt at an essay.

It’s only the EFL Trophy, and Duff’s substitutions — clearly made with an eye on the fact that there is another eight games to come in the next 32 days — reflected that fact.

At the same time, Duff himself has made clear on numerous occasions that his players cannot pick and choose which games they show up for. There were a few too many who went into hiding or failed to live up to their usual standards here.