League table says it all behind Huddersfield Town's Michael Duff sacking

Automatic promotion was the goal for the Terriers, but slipping to 7th gives them a big job to make it into the play-offs

Michael Duff is no longer head coach of Huddersfield Town after a run of just five wins in their past 16 league games, with four defeats in their last five games.

The timing of Michael Duff’s dismissal is surprising and unsurprising at the same time. With just ten matches left to go in this campaign, and Jon Worthington confirmed as caretaker boss until the end of the season, there currently looks to be no prospect of a long-term successor being appointed before the summer.

In those circumstances, there is an argument that Duff should have been afforded the opportunity to turn things around.

7th place with ten games to go is not the same as 7th place at the end of the season, after all. If Town had been able to restore themselves to the top six, they would at least have been in with a shot of promotion. Anything can happen in the play-offs, after all.

We have considerable sympathy for the injury problems that Duff has had to deal with throughout his tenure at the club, and he had shown earlier in the season that he was able to turn a dismal losing run into a long stretch of positive results.

Poor finishing has also been a dreadful and costly habit of Town’s this season, and there is little any manager to do to influence that. Joe Taylor’s ongoing return to fitness and sharpness might have changed the story.

But it would appear that falling out of the top six represented a line in the sand for Kevin Nagle — a point of no return when it came to the chairman’s faith in Duff to lead the club forward longer term.

That argument, too, holds merit when you consider Town’s dire form over the past couple of months.