Match Report: Huddersfield Town 0-0 Brentford

Brentford returned from the Galpharm Stadium with a decent point after holding Huddersfield to a goalless draw on Saturday.

As I wisely predicted in my match preview, Charlie MacDonald did indeed make a return to the starting lineup, but he somewhat surprisingly paired up with Steve Kabba as Carl Cort was ruled out through injury. There were a couple of surprises elsewhere as well, as Alan Bennett returned in central defence, and this meant we had to decide whether to play James Wilson or Mark Phillips. Instead we took the easy option an played both, with Wilson moving to right back and Danny Foster dropping to the bench. Foster’s former Dagenham teammate Sam Saunders also found himself relegated to the bench with Cleveland Taylor preferred on the right of midfield, and Marcus Bean was again kept out of the side by David Hunt and Kevin O’Connor.

The return of MacDonald was easy to anticipate, but dropping Foster and Saunders not so easy. Perhaps “dropping” isn’t the right word, perhaps they were rested, or other players simply preferred to them given the opposition. Last season we saw John Halls and Karleigh Osborne pretty much share the right back spot, with Osborne preferred against pacier opposition wingers, and Halls preferred against others. Perhaps Andy Scott saw something in Huddersfield’s lineup that made the Wilson/Taylor duo look better than Foster/Saunders?

Anyway, as I didn’t go I won’t go into too much depth on the match itself as I can only go by what I’ve seen on the Football League Show (we’re on at 42:30) and have read elsewhere, so it’d be a bit silly to regurgitate that as my own work. There’s a full match report as per usual on the official Brentford website, as well as comment from the manager, the captain and the keeper. There’s also some notes from Andy’s post match press conference courtesy of the GPG, and there’s the match reports thread on the very same forum. Pretty comprehensive stuff I’m sure you’ll agree.

Anyway, I’ll pick out the highlights. First, Andy Scott:

“I was very, very pleased. We are disappointed we haven’t won the game. They had a shot in the first five or six minutes, Jordan Rhodes had a header over the bar and they had one cleared off the line but the two clearest chances came to us.

“We kept them at bay and didn’t really look like we were going to concede. The whole team defended very well and that is what we have to do. We know we’ve got the ability to go and score goals and create chances.”

Keeping a clean sheet at Huddersfield, particularly with their recent goalscoring exploits and quality of strikers, is impressive. I believe that Huddersfield were actually the top scorers in all four English divisions so far this season, so a clean sheet away from home is a top effort. I’m not sure how close we were to winning it, the chance that Cleveland Taylor had on the Football League Show highlights isn’t the easiest but you’d hope he’d do better, but I think everyone would have taken a point and a clean sheet before the match.

There’s also some news on a couple of our injured contingent:

“Ryan Dickson is close but it is one of the medial ligaments and if he gets a knock on it, he would be set back a couple of weeks so we are being careful with him.”

“Carl [Cort] took a knock against Charlton last week and by Thursday the swelling hadn’t gone down so it wasn’t worth risking him and we hope he will be fit for the next game.”

Given that Steve Kabba seems to have had a good game, it’ll be interesting to see whether Cort just walks back into the team or he has to wait his turn. Dickson will of course come straight back in once fit, but when that will be is still unclear. You don’t really want to be messing around with ligaments too much, damage them badly and that could be his season over already.

Two of the team that worked hard to keep the clean sheet were Lewis Price and Alan Bennett. Lewis has the following to say:

“”It is not a bad result, they are a good team and have spent a lot of money. It is going to be a difficult place for teams to come and I think we had opportunities to have won it in the end.”

“The defence worked hard which makes it easier for me and makes me happy.”

What about one of those hard-working defenders, Alan Bennett?

“It was a good result and a good clean sheet. We knew this game would be a real test of League One football and it was important to come here and not get beaten.”

“As a group we hate to lose and needed a reaction from last week’s defeat [at Charlton]. We didn’t want to lose and we could have taken it with two late chances.”

A lot of last season’s success was built on a solid defence, and with Price looking more comfortable with every game and Bennett returning to add to our defence, hopefully we can pick up a few more clean sheets. If we know we’re not going to concede many goals, it puts less pressure on the strikers as they know they only have to score one or two to win us the match, and we don’t look like scoring more than a couple at best at the moment so maybe that’s for the best!

Anyway, we’ve now played away to Charlton, Southampton and Huddesfield, three of the bigger teams in this division, and have only lost once. This bodes well for the season ahead, and hopefully we can regain our winning touch against Bristol Rovers next Saturday at Griffin Park. I’m sure another former Brentford striker, Jo Kuffour, will have something to say about that…