Mahoney starts: The strongest Huddersfield Town XI Schofield can field as Burnley clash looms

Huddersfield Town are entering a new era in the Championship in 2022/23, with the campaign just around the corner now and a clash with Burnley little over a week away. 

The big change is that Danny Schofield will be leading the team from the dugout and not Carlos Corberan, who guided Huddersfield to the play-off final last season.

Schofield’s first competitive starting XI is also likely to look a lot different to Corberan’s last, with six of the 11 starters from the clash with Nottingham Forest at Wembley no longer at the club: Naby Sarr, Levi Colwill, Pipa, Danel Sinani, Lewis O’Brien and Harry Toffolo.

So, what does Huddersfield’s strongest starting line-up look like at this stage of pre-season? The truth is, it’s hard to say given the experimental nature of the fixtures and the potential change in system from Schofield.

Looking at the business done so far, though, we are guessing at something of a 4-2-3-1 given the midfield depth and addition of a No.10.

We start with the defence and, as our graphic above shows, there’s some familiar faces in there with Lee Nicholls in goal, Ollie Turton at right-back, alongside a central defence of Matty Pearson and Tom Lees.

Josh Ruffels is an option at left-back (and probably the preferred choice in a wing-back system), yet it could be that Yuta Nakayama gets the nod if it’s a flat back-four for Schofield.

Ahead of that is a double pivot, where you could select two from three of Jonathan Hogg, Jon Russell and David Kasumu.

Quite what Schofield is thinking in this area of the pitch will be interesting to watch develop. Corberan, for example, clearly felt that Hogg and Russell struggled together, which meant Hogg played a lot of football at centre-back after Russell’s emergence last