Darren Moore’s Sheffield Wednesday yearning and Huddersfield Town scepticism sums up both clubs
The manager left Hillsborough under something of a cloud in the summer and has since pitched up across Yorkshire as Terriers boss, with the two sides playing out a dull 0-0 draw
As Darren Moore made clear in the build-up to the game, moving from one club to another is part of football that anybody within the game is well used-to. The 49 year old played for eight clubs and is now at his fourth as a manager; so at a certain point, situations like the one that embroiled him this summer must start to feel almost like par for the course.
Besides, it’s not like he didn’t know what he was getting into with Sheffield Wednesday and Dejphon Chansiri. The club were already troubled enough to be well on course for relegation from the Championship when Moore arrived, with their various issues invariably starting the boardroom and filtering down from there. A two-year stint in League One has evidently done nothing to change that.
The instinctive way that Sheffield Wednesday fans picked Moore’s side over Chansiri’s this summer speaks volumes of the esteem Moore is held in both for his quiet dignity and most especially for the job he did at Hillsborough. Arresting and putting right what could have been an incredible slide is no easy task in an absolute bear pit of a division that eats so-called big clubs alive. Moore barely even had a first-team squad as his first full season in charge approached, thanks to a raft of releases amid a transfer embargo after their relegation.
Read more:Sheffield Wednesday 0 Huddersfield Town 0 as it happened
That is not to suggest it was a perfect job: critics might suggest Moore should not have needed two seasons to get it done, or that they should have gone up automatically last season, or that they had to come back from four goals down in the play-off semi-finals before winning with the very last kick of the final before the penalty shootout lottery ensued.
But you look at how Plymouth and especially Ipswich have started the season compared with Wednesday, and that vacancy in their dugout here while Moore pondered, crouched and whistled his way around the opposition technical area will have felt like more of a needless waste than ever: was Moore the best thing this club had going for it?
The rapturous reception he received after coming out of the tunnel certainly suggested so, while Wednesday fans certainly took the opportunity of a rare Chansiri visit to make their feelings known on the matter.
Neil Thompson reverting largely to the side that helped Wednesday win promotion from League One brought about an improvement in many areas, there was still little suggestion they are set to improve their woeful form in front of goal: a Callum Paterson miss in the second half was about as close as they got, with Town goalkeeper Lee Nicholls going largely untroubled all game. That winless run now extends to 11 game
For all the hoopla he received from supporters of his previous club, though, Moore still needs to win the fanbase over at Huddersfield Town. The manager’s prior achievements mean nothing the moment they take charge of their first game at a new club; Moore’s first three games in charge yielded two points, featuring performances that have lurched wildly from the impressively sublime to the deeply substandard.
This was somewhere in between, and had it come away from home against anybody but the division’s bottom side, Town supporters may not have burst out in the short, sharp round of boos that met the final whistle. The decision to rule out a late Kian Harratt strike for a questionable foul by fellow substitute Tom Lees may have been controversial, but it would have been two extra points stolen had it been allowed to stand.
Moore has not made a terrible start to life at his new club, given that three of his first four games have been away from home, but nor has he made anything like a convincing one. This, at least, was not the woefully error-ridden performance we saw against Birmingham City in midweek, but – in an echo of Wednesday’s biggest problem – nor was there much offered in the way of hope that Town are going to break their over-reliance on set piece goals to win them points. Michal Helik is not going to score 20 goals a season, is he?
