Huddersfield Town

The former Watford midfielder returned following a three game absence through a hip injury and helped Town keep their seventh clean sheet of the season against the current FA Cup holders. 

“It’s nice to be back out there playing with the lads. I’ve been working hard to get over my injury and I felt strong today. Now I’m focussed on staying fit, because once you’re out of this team it can be quite hard to get back in,” ‘Hoggy’ told htafc.com.

“It’s a good result today, because they are a top team in this League. They’ve only just come down from the Premier League and they have a lot of experience. They had a good team shape and mainly the same players who were in the top flight with them last year.”

The game was played in dreadful conditions at the John Smith’s Stadium and it took a late long range strike from Adam Clayton to seal the three points for the Terriers. 

Jonathan continued: “The conditions were terrible; it was so windy. The wind did drop a bit in the first 15 minutes of the second-half, but then the rain came down again and it became really blustery. It was difficult because the ball moved all over and it makes things difficult to judge. That’s part and parcel of the game though and I thought on the whole we dealt well with it well. 

“We had the wind more in the second-half and we had talked about playing balls into the corners during the interval to put their defence on the back foot. That in turn would give us a bit more space in the middle. 

“We didn’t play the football that we’re capable of today, but we had to play those conditions and in a tough game I thought we dealt with it better than them. We scraped through it and we’ve come away with a nice three points.”

Hogg explained that the win was important on the back of the team’s heaviest defeat of the season: 

“I was at Leeds supporting the lads last weekend and the second-half wasn’t good. We had a meeting on Monday and put that result behind us. A result like that can happen once a season, but if it does you’re determined it shouldn’t happen twice. We have a lot of good players with Championship experience and we know how to deal with the division now.”

Town’s team is quickly back in home action when Nottingham Forest come to West Yorkshire on Tuesday night – another challenge that the midfielder is relishing.

“It’s another good opponent, but we have quite a good home record and teams will start to put out a plan to stop us from playing. Hopefully the conditions will be a bit better and we can play attractive football for our fans.”