After back-to-back league victories, Huddersfield Town’s focus now shifts to the League Cup, where they will play Leicester on Wednesday evening. While many fans will expect Town to have a strong first team, I can’t recall the last time a Town manager fielded a full-strength side in the early rounds of a cup competition. The good news is that Town has a relatively deep squad, and the players who are not currently starting league games are capable of stepping in and performing well for Town.
After back-to-back league victories, Huddersfield Town’s focus now shifts to the League Cup, where they will play Leicester on Wednesday evening. While many fans will expect Town to have a strong first team, I can’t recall the last time a Town manager fielded a full-strength side in the early rounds of a cup competition. The good news is that Town has a relatively deep squad, and the players who are not currently starting league games are capable of stepping in and performing well for Town.
Does Lee Grant care about the cups?
I’d want a direct answer to this topic before leaving the house on Wednesday night, but I’m sure Lee Grant will give the standard response about respecting the competition and fielding a good team before announcing a roster consisting of backup players and kids.
While every club now rotates their squad for the cup, certain managers have a better chance of winning games than others. While they would never acknowledge it, I believe prior Town managers consciously sought to lose League Cup games in order to alleviate fixture congestion. Will Lee Grant be one of these managers, or does he, within reason, want to give it his all?
I expect a radically different lineup than the one that began against Reading, but the bench and how we deploy our substitutes will be key. If Alfie May, Ryan Ledson, and Joe Low are warming the bench, it signals that we are keeping our top players available to bring on if we need to win the game. If the bench consists primarily of academy players, it indicates that we will not strive too hard to go to the next round.
Personally, I’d like us to have a nice run at this game. Resting a few players to keep them fresh for Blackpool is understandable, but I’d want to see us do our best to get to the next round. I always like watching League Cup games under floodlights. Knockout game is entertaining, and I enjoy seeing some of the players on the margins of the squad. Not to mention the prospect of a great away trip to a big club if we can get through the first few rounds.
How well will the fringe players manage?
If we predict extensive rotation, this game could be an ideal opportunity to get some minutes into players who haven’t seen much action yet. Both Marcus McGuane and Leo Castledine have yet to play, but they will undoubtedly get some minutes in this encounter to ease them into competitive football. Josh Feeney and Murray Wallace will also receive some more playing time after not making either starting lineup this season.
Successful teams typically have a pretty settled starting eleven, but they will also have backup players ready to go when an occasion arises. For example, I could still list David Wagner’s preferred starting eleven from our promotion season, but we still had reliable backups in Martin Cranie, Dean Whitehead, and Jack Payne. Lee Grant has already underlined the importance of the entire squad contributing this season, so this game will provide an opportunity for those on the fringes to demonstrate their abilities.
How will Town deal with Leicester’s possession-based approach?
Despite winning 2-1 against Sheffield Wednesday on Sunday in their first Championship game of the season, Leicester had 75% possession and 431 completed passes to Wednesday’s 99. So, if Leicester has their way, we’ll barely get a touch of the ball and die by a thousand cuts as they pass us to submission.
Lee Grant’s selections are divided into two categories. The normal strategy would be to sit back and let them have as much possession as they want while clogging up the danger areas and hoping for the occasional breakaway to snatch a goal. Alternatively, we could aim to get in their faces, press them high, and disrupt their natural passing game in the beginning phases. The second alternative is closer to Grant’s vision for Town’s style of play, but it is also somewhat hazardous against a team that is clearly superior to us (on paper at least).
My intellect tells me to keep it tight and attempt to steal something, but my heart wants us to give it our all, even if the chances are stacked against us. If league points were on the line, struggling for a draw could make sense, but in a knockout cup game where no one’s aim is to win, why not go all out?
Will the atmosphere be rubbish?
At the time I purchased my ticket for this game the other day, Town fans could only secure tickets in the Riverside Lower. This will clearly save the club some money on stewarding and staffing the kiosks in the other stands, but I’m concerned that it will create a bizarre, lockdown football environment, with two completely empty stands and only Leicester’s visiting fans in the South Stand.
Midweek cup games rarely produce a lively atmosphere, but confining Town fans to a single stand is likely to make the stadium feel strange. I imagine that opening up the stadium to allow a low audience to spread out may detract from the atmosphere as compared to packing everyone in together, like it does for the Giants when they play home games.
After Town fans produced a great atmosphere at both of our previous games, this encounter will be a test of how Lee Grant and his players can elicit a response from fans who may not be as enthusiastic as they were against Leyton Orient and Reading. If the players perform well on the field, I’m confident the spectators will respond, even if they’re all crammed into a single stand.
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