Darren Moore has endured a testing start to his Huddersfield Town reign, recording just two wins from his 11 matches in charge since replacing Neil Warnock in the managerial hotseat
Huddersfield Town owner Kevin Nagle has thrown his support behind Darren Moore despite admitting he is “not happy” with his side’s current standing in the Championship table.
The Terriers sit fourth from bottom in the division ahead of tomorrow’s trip to Swansea City tomorrow, having registered 19 points from 18 matches played. Town claimed their fourth win of the season at Sunderland on Wednesday evening. It was only the second victory of Moore’s 11-game tenure to date.
Despite recording just a point a game since taking charge, Nagle insists his manager shouldn’t be held entirely responsible for the slow start to his reign.
“Overall, people would not necessarily be happy with the overall performance because of where you’re sitting right now (in the table),” the Terriers owner told BBC Radio Leeds.
“I’m not happy, but I’m not putting that all on Darren by any stretch. You can’t expect a manager to come in in 11 matches and just snap his fingers and make wholesale changes.
“You’ve got a whole organisation, and that’s actually what we’re really doing right now, we’re looking at everything in the organisation and making changes. Those are happening on a daily basis, they happened this week. That’s to make it stronger and better, so that Darren and the squad can perform better overall on the pitch.”
Asked whether it’s crossed his mind to end Moore’s tenure, Nagle replied: “No, that is not even a consideration. I understand that in the UK line of business, when somebody asks that question and they answer it quickly, it might be the beginning of the end, that’s not the case here.
“I believe in Darren, you’re seeing the very beginning I think of something that’s going to be really great. It’s going to take a little bit of time, we have to give him some of those building blocks in order to be successful.
“I’m just as accountable as he is, and we have Jake Edwards who’s just as accountable as he is, and Mark (Cartwright) and the whole recruitment team. We’re all in this together, and we’re working on behalf and for the fans of Huddersfield.”
Moore went winless from his opening four matches in charge, before his side got off the mark with a 2-1 victory at home to QPR in October. That success was followed with two heavy defeats to Cardiff City and Leeds United, in which four goals were shipped in each.
The defence has been tightened up since, with three goals conceded in total in the four games that have followed. While goals have proved hard to come by in recent times, Wednesday’s 2-1 victory at Sunderland has moved the Terriers six points clear of the drop zone.
Assessing the start to Moore’s time in charge, Nagle said: “Darren has done everything that we’ve asked of him. He came in seven or eight games into the season, and I think that we knew that was essentially going to be his pre-season.
“He was going to have to do his own assessment, and that was going to take time, even though it was the season.
“We knew that it was going to take some period of time for him to determine what the type of play would be for the players that he has, and I think that he’s done that now.
“He’s figured it out over a period of about another eight or 10 games, I think it’s 11 in total that he’s really been the manager of.
“I’m not happy with where we’re sitting in the table, we want to move up, but I think that to the longer question is the longer game, and that is ‘what is it that we’re going to do?’. That’s the plan that we’re going to go [with].
“It’s not going to be short-term. It’s not going to be ‘we’re going to do everything for the here and now’, because then next year is deja vu all over again, but the reality of it is that we want to make sure that we support Darren, because he’s our guy for now and in the coming future.”
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