Huddersfield Town forward to the League One promotion run in…

Lee Clark mentioned the play offs in his post match interview following the hard fought victory over league strugglers Dagenham and Redbridge, this is significant because for the first time it would appear that Huddersfield are planning for the worst as the season reaches its ever nearing conclusion.

On the back of three straight wins, and a twenty three match unbeaten run, you’d hope that automatic promotion would be a formality, but it would seem that Southampton have other plans, and the momentum we’ve built up in the second half of the season is merely allowing us to keep up with them, rather than pulling away.

The maths is simple, if the Saints win two out of their three remaining games then whatever the Terriers do is utterly irrelevant, barring some very high scoring games, as their goal difference is so superior to ours. There is one shining light here and that is that it is no longer ours to lose; the pressure is theoretically all on them, something that they seem to be dealing with well at the moment.

So often it has looked so positive for the Terriers, with the recent victory over MK Dons giving everyone a lift, as not only did we beat our play off rivals, we played with freedom and managed to score a number of goals for the first time in what seemed like ages.

This victory put us into second place and it all looked so good the following day when Southampton were 1-0 down to Champions Brighton, this looked like our chance and would be a pivotal turning point of the season.

And then they go and equalise, and then to rub salt into our wounds they go and grab a last minute winner. This was a deeply frustrating moment, and I’m starting to think that burning the effigies of Francis Benali and Matt Le Tissier was a lot of wasted energy.

For me I do find it unusual to dislike Southampton, a team I always quite liked when they used to be fighting for their lives in the Premier League every year, and now they have a manger, in Nigel Adkins, who I rate as highly as anyone in the football league.

However any warmth I have had towards them has evaporated, and is unlikely to ever return if they beat us to Promotion, this desired slip up does seem unlikely, and now it’s time for one last, elaborate, throw of the dice.

I intend to call Nigel Adkins posing as the modern day equivalent of George Weah, claiming that my cousin is quite a player, in the event of this working, I’ll pop down to training, just pose about looking like a footballer, snapping topless photos of myself on my phone and just acting like an abhorrent human being should seal the deal here. Maybe strut about midfield playing simple balls, pointing and shouting at people will convince people that I’m a real pro.

This should at the very least secure me a place on the bench, as long as I break Nigel Adkins glasses and should the call come I’ll be ready to put into action the final part of the plan I’m calling operation “Ali Dia 2”.

This would appear to be the only way on earth that Southampton are going to fail in their pursuit of the second automatic spot, such is their recent form. So with hope our only option remaining, and the play offs seeming to be a very realistic option now, every Town fan will be hoping that we at the very least remain unbeaten until the very end of the season, whenever it might end for us.

The dreaded Play offs were our downfall last year, and it was hoped by all that we’d avoid them this time around and escape the division without any of the heart attack inducing stress that comes with the end of the season lottery.

However should we end up in the play offs then we will certainly be better prepared for them than we were when we faced Millwall last year. We have real strength and experience, no longer do we crumble under pressure and teams can’t bully us anymore like the Lions did at the New Den last year, so that at least is encouraging.

One major concern however is the prospect of a penalty shoot-out, with Huddersfield missing so many penalties this year that you’d think that they had been receiving lessons on penalty technique from so many great England internationals, with the instruction being, “try and hit it softly and as near the keeper as possible, failing that high and powerful should do it”.

I truly hope that it never comes to this, but in all the years I’ve supported Huddersfield, I’ve never known us to do things the easy way, and after so many years attempting to escape this division, you just know that this is not going to be a smooth ride, this will no doubt be a planes, trains and automobiles style farce, with many frustrations yet to come.

I’m hoping that despite all this, we’ll start next season in the Championship, but I say this with little to no certainty. I won’t give up though, and at the very least hope we can take it down to the final day as I can think of no more exciting finale to what has been a brilliant season, than clinching automatic promotion in the sunshine on May the 7th. And to state the blindingly obvious “It’s not over till it’s over”.