Dean Smith felt his side didn’t deserve to get the three points as they opened up the new Sky Bet Championship campaign with a 2-1 defeat against Huddersfield Town at the John Smith’s Stadium. After a goalless first 45 minutes the home side took the lead through Elias Kachunga’s back post header just after the break. The Bees levelled when Nico Yennaris finished off a flowing team move but parity lasted just a minute before Kasey Palmer scored the winner with 15 minutes to play. Speaking after the match, Dean said he was disappointed with his side’s performance in possession but said there is lots more to come from his players.
“We are all disappointed that we lost the game,” Dean told Bees Player after the match. “I don’t think that we did enough to win the game by any shadow. They looked brighter than us until the substitutions and then I thought we had more legs about us and asked them a few questions. I thought our quality at times was lacking and we lost it sloppily. I thought that they were slightly fortunate with the second goal. Daniel Bentley has made a good save and it has just bounced back to him. We had to do better from the throw in when Romaine Sawyers gave it away. They skipped through a couple of tackles and got the shot in which bounced off him. However, there was a fantastic spirit about us and that is something that will take us far. We are a work in progress at the moment but I am sure that we will get better.”
Dean was without a number of players for his starting XI after a series of niggling injuries picked up over pre-season. The Bees boss was able to welcome Nico Yennaris back with 40 minutes to play while Josh McEachran came through 55 minutes on his first league start since March but he admitted that he could do with getting key players back fully fit.
“We have got a few players at the moment who aren’t at the stage where they can get 90 minutes in,” said Dean. “Fortunately today Scott Hogan was able to but Josh McEachran is coming back from a metatarsal injury, Nico Yennaris had to have an injection into his toe to get him onto the pitch today. Yoann Barbet felt his ankle and Maxime Colin is still out. We have a number of players who we know aren’t match fit so it was always the plan to make the change on 60 minutes. We had to do it earlier because they got their tails up with the goal but I thought that changed the game slightly.”
Dean handed debuts today to Daniel Bentley, Callum Elder, John Egan, and Romaine Sawyers while Lewis Macleod made his first competitive start in a Bees shirt. With a number of new faces in the team Dean admitted that some players would take time to completely bed in and re-iterated that he was still in the market for wide players.
“We need to have better quality and we will,” said Dean. “We have got a talented group of players. It was Scott Hogan’s first 90 minutes and a first start for Lewis Macleod, Callum Elder, and Romaine Sawyers. We have a young team out there who are learning all the time and they showed glimpses of how good they can be. We want to bring players in in wide areas. You only have to look today that we had Romaine Sawyers and Lewis Macleod playing out there. It is not really their natural position, and they are not ones to go on the outside, but they are clever footballers. We needed to get support up to Scott Hogan quicker so we are looking for a little bit of pace.”