Nadir

An embarrassing defeat at Burton, which fully exposed a squad of pea hearted losers, had put Town’s 24/25 campaign on life support with fingers hovering over the switch.

While the vast majority of supporters gave up on this team some time ago, it was expected that the club should fight until the mathematics confirmed what we all knew. It is the minimum of standards for a professional football club.

Teams above Town in the table were demonstrating the inconsistency embedded in this quite dreadful league, so the challenge of Cambridge United, deep in relegation trouble and sporting a horrendous away record, was an opportunity to make the last few games of mild interest.

John Worthington, whose interim tenure peaked at half time against a Crawley side who had generously gifted 4 goals to a team in dire need of charity, was going toe to toe with gnarly old Neil Harris, a managerial mismatch similar to the ones he faced at the Valley and the disgusting defeat a week ago.

An encouragingly bright start against opponents who looked every inch bound for League 2 was brought to a screeching halt when the strugglers’ keeper developed a mystery injury after less than 15 minutes. It must have been a desperately serious strain given the length of treatment he received, but fortunately for Neil Harris, this allowed him to get instructions across to nullify Town’s easy incursions.

The decline in performance from that point was stark. The season in microcosm – a little burst of competence, accompanied by something approaching intensity fizzling out into a morass of misplaced passes, lack of movement and poor decision making.

As if intent on mocking us, the football Gods decided that this was also the time to strike down Balker with yet another injury. No words.

As two clueless teams dragged themselves before a halftime break which couldn’t come soon enough, it really was difficult to decide which of them was in relegation trouble as they served up as dire a 30 minutes of football as we have seen this season, and there is a lot of competition for that honour.

Despite entirely lacking any quality, Cambridge came closest to scoring in the first half as Town had to desperately defend the best move of the game. Portentous.

A typically insipid display, bar the first ten minutes, from a disjointed team with little discernible spirit delivered two shots on target, including one which the keeper could have thrown his cap on, and a decent longe range effort just over the bar from the otherwise terrible Evans.

Harris must have realised that an unlikely win was very much within his grasp against a side becoming more rabble like by the week.

One or two brighter moments aside, which nevertheless all ended disappointingly, the second half screamed of impending disaster as Town’s group of players – they rarely looked like a team – got sucked in to their old, old problem of a surfeit of useless possession against a defensive block.

Ruffles’ long range effort beaten out by Stevens, the Cambridge keeper whose serious injury earlier in the game had thankfully subsided, was the highlight of a huffing and puffing, entirely unconvincing display by a squad yearning for warmer climes.

The gloom of a sparse crowd, long past caring, was temporarily lifted by the substitution of Kachunga. The righteous and generous applause for a past warrior was tinged with the bitter knowledge that the good times associated with Elias were gone and not returning anytime soon.

Then came the inevitable kick in the chops as Cambridge broke away and took advantage of some quite appalling defending by Ruffles and Pearson. The former had effectively subdued the threat only for the latter to pile in, cause confusion and forced an error from Ruffles whose clearance fell straight to Brophy who picked out the top corner with a very good strike.

The simmering anger of a crowd thoroughly exhausted by a group of players who have repeatedly let them down boiled over and it is hard to recall the last time the level of disharmony was this serious.

Constantly poor decision making by an arrogant hierarchy, apparently underpinned by expensive consultants while fan groups are completely ignored, is finally coming to a head in the stands. With little confidence that this will change, even following the departure of serial failure and lightning rod Cartwright, further decline is inevitable.

The brief respite experienced when Koroma bundled in an equaliser following a scramble was cut short soon after when Sorensen, one of the most disappointing signings amongst an expanding list, inexplicably headed infield straight to an opponent leading to a very well taken winner as the curtain finally went down on a season which wasn’t even enjoyable during a long unbeaten run.

Huddersfield Town’s problems are deep rooted, endemic and far from easy to resolve. Culturally broken over several seasons, sacking the Director of Football is a start but the massive changes required are difficult, requiring insight and courage, qualities which aren’t particularly discernible down at the Mac.

The vital clear out must be decisive and quick. No extensions, all loans back, offload anybody that can be offloaded, find a strong manager to oversee the whole football operation without interference from suits, impose rigid dressing room discipline.

Kevin Nagle tells us how much money he has spent, without a great deal of context, but we know, instinctively, that a hell of a lot has been wasted and the season card decisions, even with the inevitable backtracking, are a recipe for disaster and will take us back to 2010 crowd levels. 

Have a great summer.