Darren Moore notched his first win of his Huddersfield Town tenure on Saturday by overcoming a spirited but misfiring QPR team. It was mostly thanks to a very good opening spell, some desperate defending and QPR’s own problems that Town came away with a win when their performance was probably a long way short of other games this season where we’ve either lost or drawn. For example, the previous game against Ipswich was a far better performance despite Town only getting a point.
But points are the thing that keep you in the division, not pretty football, so maybe this was the kind of game Town needed to get Darren Moore’s time at Town properly started. Or perhaps this win was a false dawn and there are warning signs we should be taking heed of before things get any worse. We won’t know until we see how this next run of games pans out.
Is there such a thing as a bad win?
If there can be a bad win, then I’d put this game in that category. It wasn’t awful by any stretch of the imagination but QPR were better than Town from the second goal going in until the final whistle and Town struggled to manage out the game despite QPR looking a disorganised mess at times.
The way Town carved QPR open in the opening stages was lovely to watch but the complete absence of this kind of free-flowing, attacking football once we went two goals ahead was very puzzling. Perhaps QPR sharpened up their defensive work but Town also seemed to decide they wanted to cling on to their lead rather than try and press home their advantage against a struggling team that seemed to be imploding when Rudoni slotted in our second.
The seventy or so minutes of nervy and cagey football that Town clung on to their lead did at least mean we got our third win of the season but as a spectacle to watch, it was pretty painful at times. I also worry that this approach to the game wasn’t deliberate game management but a psychological weakness in the team, that makes them back off when they’re ahead and allows the other team back in.
