Michael Duff says Huddersfield’s ‘quality came out’ in Cambridge rout

Huddersfield boss Michael Duff praised his side’s attacking threat after they hammered Cambridge 4-0.

The Terriers closed the gap on the top two with a comprehensive Friday night win at the Abbey Stadium. They were three up by half-time before Callum Marshall’s second goal after the break sealed an 11th league game unbeaten for Duff’s side.

Despite sitting in the bottom four Cambridge had only lost two of their previous 10 league games, this being their first home defeat in the competition since October 1.

“We looked a threat, playing through teams, playing over teams, playing around teams. That’s what we want to be, we want to hurt teams in different ways,” Duff said.

“In the first five, 10 minutes they started really well, won two corners and we made some good blocks. And then the quality came out. We hurt them in every which way possible in the first half.

“They came out, changed shape, they had a reaction, there was a sloppy 15 minutes where we had to change the shape. Then once the fight’s gone out of them a little bit the quality starts coming out again.

“You’re not going to dominate a game for 90 minutes. We fully respected Cambridge, they’ve had a couple of decent results recently. You have to fight to win a game. No one’s going to roll over at any level.

“This period of the season often dictates where you finish in the league, it’s like a microcosm of the season. We wanted to do our business early today and we have.”

David Kasumu opened the scoring in the 12th minute and Brodie Spencer’s second was quickly added to by Marshall, who then struck again in the final 20 minutes.

Garry Monk rued the number of Cambridge players who failed to match their good recent form.

“We didn’t help ourselves at all tonight,” Monk reflected. “We had a good start to the game, the first 10, 15 minutes was really good.

“It was really difficult to see that coming tonight. The simple fact of it is we had too many below par.

“We conceded a really poor first goal, quickly compounded that a couple of times with some other mistakes. Obviously there’s then a mountain to climb. We’re all hugely disappointed with the result and performance tonight.

“We’re not a team that can afford one or two below par, let alone pretty much everyone. It’s a lesson to learn, we cannot afford to be anywhere near that off our best, especially in the fundamentals of the game; the defensive solidity, the competing side of it, the first balls and second balls.

“We’ve built this period around that first, and then giving ourselves an opportunity. We saw in the first 10, 15, but as soon as that first goal came in we saw our level of performance drop.”