Huddersfield Town competition for starting striker berth reaching boil at perfect moment

Earlier this season, we highlighted the enormous contribution Danny Ward was making to Huddersfield Town by way of highlighting his excellent numbers when it came to minutes per team goal scored and conceded when he was on the pitch. The striker was top of the class among Terriers regulars on both measures, and in fact he remains highly-ranked on both counts.

It is with slight surprise, then, that we have now looked at those numbers again, and there’s a new leader in the clubhouse when it comes to players to have played at least 500 Championship minutes this season – and his name is Jordan Rhodes.

Right off the bat we should say that there is a significant natural bias both towards and against players with smaller sample sizes in these numbers. A player who played every single minute of every single game would of course have numbers that were exactly average for the team’s performance as a whole.

Nonetheless, Rhodes’ numbers are impressive. In his 664 minutes across 20 appearances, Town have scored 15 goals (once every 45 minutes) and conceded just six (once every 110 minutes). Town have won four, drawn one and lost none of their five games with Rhodes in the starting lineup, scoring eight and conceding just two.

On top of repeating that warning about sample size, we should probably point out that all but one of Rhodes’ starts have come against sides in the division’s bottom eight, even after taking points deductions out of the equation: Derby, Birmingham, Hull and Barnsley. On top of that, he has claimed goals and assists from the bench against Derby, Cardiff and Blackpool – all bottom-half sides.

But despite all those reasons to remain cool on Rhodes, it’s difficult to overlook that his best performance of all came