Minutes later and there was another example of poor defending. Aaron Mooy delivered a good ball into the box, as Juninho Bacuna rose highest and completely unmarked equalised for the visitors. The shoddy defending just kept on coming. Chris Lowe found himself in some space following a free kick, sending in a scuffed cross. Though somehow it found Karlan Grant, who was left completely unmarked and directed the ball into the bottom right corner.
Poor defending aside, the Terriers have plenty to be positive about. This was their highest-scoring game of the season and would have brought them off the bottom for the first time since December if they were able to hold out. Today’s game was only the second time that Huddersfield have scored more than once in the Premier League this season, a stat which goes to show their abysmal finishing.
Another more worrying statistic that the Terriers have now abolished is that this is the first time they’ve had more than one goalscorer in a league match since February 2018, against West Brom. A rarity from them. Given the disappointment of losing late on, Jan Siewert’s side should take some attacking impetus into their next game against Crystal Palace, who are also defensively unstable themselves.
Huddersfield boss, Siewert added that he wasn’t completely devastated, “Can’t you see on my face that I’m not totally disappointed?”
A defensive disaster for the Terriers
Former Borussia Dortmund reserve-team boss Siewert could hardly hide his frustration following his side’s late defeat, “I worked everything out to give my players a possibility of winning here, and they showed it – we were winning 3-1, but then they lost it with three situations.”
The first may have been prevented by tighter marking, stopping Ogbonna climbing to reach Cresswell’s corner. Town were also second best to react to a half-cleared set piece when Nasri collected the ball and teed up Hernandez to head home for the second. The third came in the dying minutes, Anderson picked up a short corner and clipped in the delivery. Three examples of poor defending, which could easily have been prevented – all three of the Hammer’s second-half goals began with left-wing corners taken by Aaron Cresswell.