Huddersfield Town turn pressure to their advantage as ground-out victory all that matters

Huddersfield Town have put in much more convincing performances this season, especially considering Hull City played half the game with ten men. But at this stage of the season, we’ll take an ugly, ground-out 0-1 away win any night of the week.

Town have been here before, of course. At the start of the season, they were similarly underwhelming at home to Preston North End after a bruising defeat to Fulham, but got through it before claiming a fortuitous late winner.

After losing that two-goal lead at West Brom and suffering back-to-back defeats to Millwall and Bournmeouth, even Carlos Corberan – usually a devoted proponent of performance and competitiveness above all else – felt the only thing that was important was getting out of East Yorkshire with three points to continue the primary objective he started working on over the international break: putting that poor little run of results out of the players’ heads.

This result can now be the foundation of what will hopefully become a positive end-of-season run-in and the attainment of a place in the play-offs. The next three games are all six-pointers, against fellow Premier League hopefuls Luton Town, Queens Park Rangers and Middlesbrough, all to be played in the space of eight days either side of Easter.

Those games are going to demand a higher level of performance than this, and Town cannot rely on those opponents generously having a man sent off for two silly yellow-card offences before the break as Tom Eaves was here.

Town had struggled for fluency up to that point, with Jon Russell effectively marked out of the game by two Hull men. That forced Tom Lees and Levi Colwill to look instead for rather speculative long balls forward. With all due respect to Jordan Rhoes