Michael Duff happy as Huddersfield stay patient before beating Barnsley

Posted Saturday, October 05, 2024 by PA

Huddersfield boss Michael Duff was relieved to see his side end their four-game losing run with a 2-0 victory over Barnsley.

Ben Wiles and David Kasumu struck inside the last seven minutes for the hosts to deliver a home win that Duff felt was no less than the Terriers deserved against his former club.

He said: “I thought we were good value for the win. You’re never going to dominate a game for 90 minutes, but I thought we were the dominant team for 90 minutes against a good team.

“At 0-0 there’s always a bit of a worry because at half-time you’re thinking ‘have we missed our opportunities?’

“The most pleasing part is we didn’t panic, like we have a couple of times already this season, and the fact that when Barnsley had their 15-minute spell in the second half, our players stuck to their task. They they had to sit in for a couple of minutes, but then we came back out.

“That’s a positive, because that’s part of the mentality that we’re trying to get to. We’ve had it where we have a little bit of adversity and people go into themselves and – not consciously – go into self preservation thinking ‘I’ll just look after myself now’, and it gets you nowhere.

“We’ve got a worldie in the end [from Wiles] to win again, but it was either going to be that or it was going to go in off someone’s backside.”

Barnsley boss Darrell Clarke admitted that his side were not worthy of any more than they got.

He said: “For probably two or three weeks now we haven’t been at the levels we need to be at, if I’m honest.

“Our keeper’s made a couple of good saves first half; second half it’s a bit more even. We went a bit more attack-minded with the wide players with our changes and had a great chance, but we’re punished by a real sloppy goal from our perspective. It’s a good finish, but one that we look at defensively as not good enough.

“We’re very loose on transition: 10-yard passes going out of play, not looking after it. The quality has to be a lot better.

“The fanbase is absolutely superb, but we at the minute – and I say ‘we’ because it’s not just the players, it’s myself and the staff – need to look in the mirror and make sure we get it right.

“We haven’t got another league game now for a couple of weeks, so it’s a lot of hard work on to training pitch and see if we can get our play a lot better.

“The lads are good lads to coach but we also know that we need a lot more. Even when we’ve been winning games I’ve expected more.”