What a great week for Huddersfield Town – and it could be about to get a whole lot better!
The biggest ever crowd at the John Smith’s Stadium will witness the FA Cup clash with Manchester City, and the vast majority of supporters will be roaring on David Wagner’s in-form side.
While a few of the squad players have been given their opportunity in previous rounds against Port Vale and Rochdale, this is such a high-profile game at home that I don’t think a single player from what you might call ‘the first team’ will want to miss out.
The key to Town’s side is that they’ve got a lot of young players and, when they are winning like Town are at the moment, those young players don’t get tired.
If fact, no player gets tired when they are winning games.
Town are an attractive 11/2 to win the game with Sky Bet, but the wager which most catches my eye is the 9/1 for Town to win by a one-goal margin.
There are so many positives for Town going into the tie, but one thing which maybe hasn’t fully been noted is that Barcelona lost 4-0 to PSG in the Champions League.
Pep Guardiola, the Manchester City boss, will now be looking at the Champions League and noting that Bayern Munich are now the 9/4 favourites.
It will probably also be in his mind that, maybe, only Bayern and Real Madrid can possibly stop him from taking the Champions League crown with Manchester City.
So Monaco at the Etihad in the Champions League next Tuesday could very likely be Pep’s priority.
In his defence, Pep has played a very strong City side in the previous rounds away to West Ham and Crystal Palace.
But on each of those occasions, he didn’t have a Champions League match to think about just a few days later.
Just as an aside, with all the various storylines around this match, I have no idea why Town v Manchester City is not being shown live on TV.
Still, Town’s fans will get right behind the team once again, especially with Brighton and Newcastle there to be shot at for the automatic promotion places in the Championship table.
Only one team is emerging from the pack to challenge those two, and no-one will need to be told who!
That’s massively encouraging for Town and their supporters and this next three months could be the most exciting time in the club’s modern history.
