Troubled Huddersfield Town suffer fresh injury setback before Birmingham City trip

-Credit: (Image: Getty Images)
-Credit: (Image: Getty Images)


Huddersfield Town have been dealt another major injury blow with the news that Lee Nicholls will be sidelined for "10 to 12 weeks" because of an elbow injury. First-choice shot-stopper Nicholls aggravated the knock in the warm-up ahead of Saturday's clash with Reading.

Nicholls' injury will require surgery and follows swiftly on from Michal Helik sustaining a serious hamstring problem. Striker Danny Ward is also unavailable for selection due to a calf issue.

Terriers head coach Michael Duff, meanwhile, believes tomorrow's clash against Birmingham City will be a “real challenge” for his side as they look to end the hosts’ unbeaten start to their League One campaign.

The Terriers take on the league leaders at St Andrew’s, with Chris Davies’ side having registered 19 points from their opening seven league matches of the season. The fellow relegated outfit began their campaign with a draw against Reading, but have backed that up with six successive league victories ahead of tonight’s encounter.

Town also started the season well, but Duff’s side have suffered a downturn in form in recent weeks, losing four of their last five league matches. Despite the Terriers facing a tough assignment tomorrow night, Duff insists his side are looking forward to the challenge ahead.

“From a player point of view and for myself, these are brilliant games you want to be involved in, because you want to be involved in big games,” said Duff. “When you’re a young kid, you want to play at the biggest stadiums in front of full houses, you don’t aspire to go and play in a rickety old stadium where there’s no-one there. It’s an opportunity to get a result, it’s an opportunity to give a better performance.

“It’s going to be a tough place [to go], I think they’re unbeaten, with some good players. A positive atmosphere, full [stadium], so it’s a real challenge.”

Town head into the game off the back of a 2-1 defeat at Reading on Saturday, which was a third straight league loss for the Terriers.

The reverse leaves Town sitting 10th in League One ahead of the Birmingham clash, on 12 points from eight matches played, and Duff has tasked his side with cutting out their mistakes in order to give themselves a better chance of improving their form.

“We keep shooting ourselves in the foot, [whether] that’s scoring own goals, giving the ball away in key areas at key times of games like we did at Blackpool, and same again on Saturday. We need to eradicate individual error,” the Terriers’ boss said. “From a team point of view, I thought Saturday was much better.

“We’ve just got to deal with the reality of the situation. We had a really positive start, and we’re going through a sticky patch, there’s no getting away from that.

“We need to keep doing the things we were doing that won us games, keep doing the work that we’re doing. It can’t become bad work, it was obviously good work because we were winning games. We’re still implementing a lot of things, and that’s all we’ll be trying to do, just keep working hard and hopefully turn the luck.”