Huddersfield Town 1 - 0 Sunderland
The post-Moore revival continues under interim coach Jon Worthington. Sunderland offered a much sterner test than the previous home game, but were unable to break through the Huddersfield high press. The "Keighley Cannavaro" Matthew Pearson's close range tap-in from a parried Jack Rudoni free kick in the first half meant a first 'double' of the season for Town and leaves the Terriers five points clear of the bottom three. Still a long way to go but it's a step in the right direction, and fans are now excited to go to games again after Darren Moore made it such a chore. The players seem to be enjoying having the shackles taken off too, so if (as is now rumoured) Worthington is to remain in temporary charge until the end of the season it'll at least be entertaining!
One peculiar thing about the game was that due to the newish rule about teams only being allowed three stoppages of play for substitutions, Sunderland had to play the last ten minutes with only ten players on the field due to an injury. Whilst my team benefitted on this occasion I do think this rule change should be reversed. We already rightly have things like the concussion protocol for player safety, but this rule could lead to players staying on the field and suffering an aggravation to an injury to avoid their team being a player short. To me this goes against the idea that player safety should be a priority- the rule was introduced to prevent time-wasting but the way to prevent time-wasting is to ensure that all time for stoppages is added on at the end. Teams can now make five substitutions during the game, it shouldn't matter if they do this at five different times during the game or three, because time-management by the officials should be better. This rule seemingly admits that officials are incapable of doing so.
