TOO MANY uncharacteristic mistakes left Huddersfield Town kicking themselves.
Quite simply, the crispness of thought and deed which normally galvanises Lee Clark’s side into a potent attacking force rarely bubbled through.
Much of that was down to Oldham’s pressurising of the man in possession and – despite Town’s much-improved efforts towards the end of the match – Paul Dickov’s side needed only one goal to preserve their unbeaten league record at Boundary Park.
It came in the 24th minute from burly Sunderland loan striker Oumare Tounkara – a wrecking ball of a human being who fed off Town’s insecurities in the first half and provided a ready outlet for his busy midfield.
That 24th minute showed how fine the dividing line can be between gaining some reward and going home empty handed in a division which is ludicrously tight.
Firstly Town should have taken the lead, Anthony Pilkington and Jordan Rhodes creating the space for Graham Carey to take aim from 12 yards, but he dragged his shot across the face of goal and agonisingly wide of the target.
Town’s brilliant following of 3,665 – who had earlier seen penalty appeals waved away when Peter Clarke was seemingly felled in the box – had barely had time to retake their seats when Oldham were carving their way quickly to the other end.
Dean Furman sensed Town were vulnerable as colleagues gave him options on both sides, but he played Tounkara straight down the middle with a pass of destructive accuracy.
Town keeper Ian Bennett – who had earlier made a brilliant double save to deny Furman and Chris Taylor, and who played superbly throughout – was unlucky not to block the powerful frontman in full flow.
But the ricochet from the challenge fell kindly for Tounkara, who was able to pass the ball into an unguarded net.
It was a simple goal for Town to concede – only 50 seconds between Carey’s chance and theirs – and Oldham were visibly lifted by going ahead.
Suddenly Furman, the excellent Portuguese Felipe Morais and the pacy Cedric Evina – a colleague of Benik Afobe in the Arsenal youth team – were all over Joey Gudjonsson and Damien Johnson in the centre of the park and Town were shaken.
Only a magnificent last-gasp tackle by Johnson in the six-yard box prevented Kieran Lee extending the lead, before Bennett grabbed a Morais free-kick and then pounced to make a breathtaking one-handed stop from Tounkara’s angled drive as Oldham broke through again.
Dale Stephens and Evina also went close as Town, battling all the way to plug the gaps, created problems for themselves by giving the ball away far too easily when they had possession.
Decent supply to the frontmen became just about non-existent as Oldham eagerly maintained their stranglehold on midfield, and Town’s cause wasn’t helped when Anthony Pilkington made an early exit due to injury – even though replacement Scott Arfield did a sound job on the right.
Something needed to change and Clark sent on big Alan Lee to give Town more physical presence up front and, perhaps, to hold the ball and create more time for his teammates to find their attacking rhythm.
Clark was furious when Town started sloppily once again, however, having a lucky let-off as Taylor wasted a glorious chance when unmarked, but the match then started to even out.
Arfield raised hopes with a nice run and cross which Lee headed just wide and, when Gary Roberts joined the mix for Carey with 25 minutes left, Oldham found themselves under more pressure than at any other time in the game.
Town continued to make errors, as emphasised by Clarke’s over-hit free-kick straight to keeper Dean Brill, and they still had to rely on Bennett for having a sniff of an equaliser – the experienced No1 making a wonderful stop from Evina before Johnson cleared off the line from the unmarked Jean-Yves M’Voto from the resulting corner.
Town refused to give up the ghost with Roberts, Lee and Afobe all causing problems for the home defence, but the 78th-minute effort which Afobe tried to place past Brill from the edge of the box was the only shot they managed on target in the entire 90 minutes.
That’s not a statistic you very often encounter with Town, whose brightness and verve in attack is one of their stand-out qualities, but this was not one of their better days at the office.
A first defeat in five in all competitions was hard to stomach, especially as Town knew they had fallen below the standards which had taken them to second in the League I table, but it came against a very useful Oldham side who did their job well.
They rarely allowed Town’s midfield to click or the full-backs to support, they pounced on the errors which their pressure helped to force and it wasn’t until the final quarter that their defence experienced any extended spells of pressure.
So a few bookmarks for Town with a third of the season gone, the first to get straight back to their best tomorrow night.
