One To Watch: Joel Lynch

It’s safe to say that Joel Lynch is not a household name, and the welshman probably never will be. But as a defender at this level, it is pretty much impossible to get through him. The man is like a brick wall.

Without Clayton, I have struggled to see where our goals will come from if it’s not from the head of Jon Toral and so I was hoping that we wouldn’t play a defence which was cohesive. Unfortunately, despite some defeats, I think that Huddersfield have the makings of a very tight knit back four.

This season, Lynch has played 15 games and in that time as had 94 clearances. He can boot the ball like any other defender but he is also elegant in possession. He plays on the left hand side of a CB partnership with Hudson and this works very effectively.

The reason I have chosen a player in their defence is because I believe that we are the better team and we will have the lions share of the ball. Due to this, we don’t need to worry too much about their strikers, Morrison can handle them. But it’s trying to penetrate the defence that I think we struggle with.

Sometimes I feel that we need a little bit more creativity in the attacking third. After losing Cotterill and Clayton to injury, it’s nice to see the likes of Brown getting a game but we need these players to play with their heart on their sleeves and not in a way that’s safe. We have to put a run together in order to get the confidence back, and I think that if we beat Lynch, then we can easily score. Just we need to be clever in trying to get past him.

Lynch’s flaw is his pace. He is 6ft 2 and weighs more than the average Joe, mainly due to muscle I have to say. But he is not exactly the lightest on his feet. Due to that, I’d actually play Gray up front. Get Toral and Davis to just feed the ball over the top for Gray to run onto, or even ball to Gray’s feet as he can beat Lynch for pace.