Huddersfield Town transfer links leave Carlos Corberan intentions a mystery

One of Huddersfield Town’s great strengths last year was their superior adaptability and tactical flexibility. Carlos Corberan proved adept at coming up with bespoke gameplans for each individual match as it came, playing seven distinct on-the-ball shapes and at least three systems off the ball.

There’s no questioning the results that approach brought, but the revamp the club hope to execute in attacking positions offers them the opportunity to evolve into a side that plays on their own terms more often than the opposition’s.

The shape they used for the longest extended spell last year was a 3-4-3 in the first half of the season, but Corberan himself acknowledged that was more motivated by the personnel they had available than a particular preference for that shape, with Ollie Turton still getting up to life as a Championship right-back; Sorba Thomas in excellent form at wing-back; and Matty Pearson, Tom Lees and Levi Colwill forming an undisturbably solid back three.

By January, though, all those circumstances had changed. Turton had got up to speed, Thomas looked more effective as a winger, and Colwill had picked up an injury that would rule him out until March.

Experiments away from 3-4-3 had already started – Town played 4-2-3-1 at Barnsley and 4-4-2 at Nottingham Forest in December – but it was here that we started to see more and more changes on a game-by-game basis.

Corberan did not play the same shape for two league games in a row between the draw against Stoke on 28th January and the win over Barnsley on 22nd April, switching between a 4-3-3, a 4-4-2, a 3-4-3, a 4-4-2, a 4-2-3-1, a 3-4-2-1 and a 3-5-2 as each occasion demanded.

Interestingly, around that period Town started in an out-and-out back three just four