The Terriers sit ninth in the League One table
Huddersfield Town interim head coach Jon Stead insists that “a lot’s riding” on his side’s final game of the League One campaign at AFC Wimbledon.
Town end their season with a clash at Plough Lane, before their attention switches towards a third term in the third tier.
The Terriers sit ninth in the League One table ahead of Saturday’s encounter, on 64 points from 45 matches played, while AFC Wimbledon are 19th on 53 points.
Following last weekend’s 4-1 defeat to Mansfield Town, Terriers’ owner Kevin Nagle said on X that he and the club’s staff would be watching today’s clash closely to “see who is playing for the shirt…and who is ready to go on vacation”, and Stead said at his pre-match press conference on Friday: “I think a lot’s riding on it (the game). I think there’s a lot of things around staff riding on it as well, there’s things about players, decisions on those for their futures, so I think everybody’s got real things to play for.
“It’s probably the opposite – it’s kind of billed as a dead rubber with obviously Wimbledon winning their game last week, and securing their place in the league for next season, so in terms of how we look at it and how Kevin looks at it, is that there’s everything to play for.
“That should be the case every game, that’s what this business is about, that’s why we do it, it’s because everything is on the line every time you walk through the door here, and it should be like that, because you need to have that to be in an elite environment, and that’s what we’re looking to build and create.
“There’s not been many conversations (with Nagle), but I don’t think there needs to be, because I think the tweet was very clear – everybody needs to be on it, you need to show how much you’re committed, you need to make sure that that’s very, very visible to see, because sometimes that’s the only way you can show it, is out on the pitch.
“Not me talking to you, not the players talking to you, it needs to be shown, it needs to be felt, and seen and heard, by everybody else outside in that stand. The pressure’s on in terms of that, because everybody is playing and competing and working hard for their futures, and that future, if you want it to be with Huddersfield Town, then you’ve got to put it in.”
Last Saturday’s convincing loss was Town’s first under the interim management team of Stead and Martin Drury, following a victory at Leyton Orient and four draws, and Stead added: “We’ve been with this group long enough now, and seen enough from them through these games that they’ve given everything. There’s been a complete turn in spirit, in togetherness, in passion, in fight for the club, and we’ve seen it in abundance.
“I’m looking towards this weekend now as that game being a bit of a one off, and if you have one poor performance and one little lapse of concentration, and not being quite at it for one game out of six, then across the space of the season you’d take that, so I’m hoping that’s the case.
“The players knew that they let each other down, they knew they let the staff down, and the club as well, and that performance, it didn’t fit in line with the rest of them that we’ve seen, and again there’s a lot of reasons behind that, and I think the biggest one is, we spoke to the players at half-time actually at Leyton Orient, and just said ‘look, believe in yourselves more’.
“I’m a very positive person in general, probably a bit too positive at times, but the belief that we had, as myself and Martin and the staff, that we could get to a position where we could be going into this last game with everything to play for, we had 100 per cent belief in that, and I’m not sure at times the players did, and I think that’s just an accumulation of difficult moments throughout the season that’s kind of knocked them and knocked their confidence.
“We’d got to a point where I think we’d picked that back up, and we’d got there with it, and then you get another knock at Bolton and you have that frustration, and then the results that follow on that Tuesday then make it a very difficult end to the season.
“I’m hopeful and I’m really pushing for them to show everybody that it was a blip on Saturday, and that wasn’t a performance that they can hold themselves to, because the others have been very good.”
