Can Huddersfield Town kick-start their season as fixture list burden finally eases?

Scoring goals continues to be a problem for Huddersfield Town and it will need to be addressed sooner rather than later if the Yorkshire outfit are to have any chance of prolonging their stay in English football’s top flight.

The Terriers have only managed to score 14 goals in 26 Premier League games since the turn of the year, while we need to go all the way back to the 14th April to find the last time that they scored in front of their own fans.

These sort of stats have relegation material written all over them and our latest goal projections, based on the GW10 betting lines suggest that they won’t get much joy against Watford this weekend either.

So, where are we going with this you might ask?

Well, in terms of raw data Huddersfield would not appear to be faring too well on the underlying stats front either, so, it came as a bit of a surprise to us when we discovered that they were the only possible ‘play’ on this weekend’s Premier League card, once we had modelled all of the GW10 fixtures on xG, looking for discrepancies against the goal lines posted above.

Now, you might recall that we ran this experiment last season and it’s fair to say that it produced some staggering results. Focusing on Asian Handicap and Total Goals lines only, covering a good sample of games, we were very encouraged by the results and are keen to see how it performs again.

So, even though the Hornets have made an impressive start to the new season, they will need to give three-quarters of a goal away in this one at the weekend and that may prove a tall order based on what our model is telling us.

David Wagner will have been encouraged by the performances the Terriers have put in their last 2 starts, a 1-1 at Burnley, followed by a narrow 1-0 home loss to Liverpool.

Huddersfield edged both encounters on totals shots, while seeing plenty of the ball in the process.

Fantasy Premier League managers should also take note of their upcoming fixture list. Having had to face Chelsea, Manchester City, Spurs and Liverpool in their opening 9 games, the Terriers now embark on a 6 game run where they will face Watford (a), Fulham (h), West Ham (h), Wolves (a), Brighton (h) and Bournemouth (a).

While going for any of their offensive assets might be stretching things a bit too far, the prospect of potential clean sheets brings many of their budget rearguard into the equation.

We’ll be keeping a close eye on how Wagner sets up his troops on Saturday, although we’re not anticipating a repeat of last season’s 4-1 win!

Can Huddersfield kick-start their season?