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Emile Smith Rowe is clearly a wonderful player, but the effect he has had on Huddersfield Town's attacking movement extends far beyond what the man himself is capable of doing on the ball.

Town's touch heatmaps prior to Smith Rowe's arrival tended to bifurcate like a pair of trousers with one leg going down either side of the opposition penalty box, with precious little happening in between. Which…erm. Probably best we get away from this analogy, come to think of it.

The point is an obvious one but without a player in the middle ready to receive the ball and move it in all directions – preferably not backwards – your patterns of play can become extremely predictable and easy to defend against.

We saw last season that Town put in more crosses than any other Premier League side and it didn't get them anywhere: teams are quite happy for you to keep piling balls into the box for them to head away.

When we ran the stats after Danny Cowley's first game in charge, we found that Town were putting in almost exactly the average number of crosses a Championship team makes per game; now they are putting in fewer crosses than any side except Reading and QPR.

That reduction in crossing frequency goes against the prevailing trend in the division but was a sensible move given Town's utter uselessness at it. Even Cowley once bitterly commented not long into his reign at Town that the only consistently good crosser of the ball in the squad was Alex Pritchard...and he was injured.

That decision to be just a bit more selective has helped produce a dramatic upturn in delivery quality. Upon Cowley's arrival the Terriers were comfortably the worst side in the division at putting balls into the box, completing just 11.5% - less than half as good as what was then Championship standard (23.3%).

Now…well, they're still one of the weakest crossing sides in the division (only Swansea are worse), but since the Cowleys' first game, their completion rate has been up to 20.9% against a Championship average of 22.3%.

That improvement started prior to Smith Rowe's arrival – but needless to say, if you're being more selective about when you go out wide and put balls into the box, you need to find other ways through. And that is where Town were previously coming unstuck.

Let's take a look at that 3-1 defeat at Swansea City in February, which provide a particularly useful lesson because Smith Rowe came on shortly after the break after a poor Town performance on the ball that exhibited many of their old bad habits.

Town certainly had enough possession and territory, but there is an absolutely glaring gap waiting to be exploited in the middle of the final third. Instead, Town limited their own passing options to either going up the wing, futilely to get the ball into the feet of a closely-marked forward, or simply go backwards.

Defenders go where attackers go, of course, so it's not as simple as saying 'if Smith Rowe had played, he'd have had all that space'. But the point is that when defenders have more space to cover, they get stretched - and that's when they can get exploited.

Sure enough, we can see that after Smith Rowe's introduction, Town suddenly have a player in a central attacking position to play the ball into from wide areas, allowing other midfielders to overlap into the channels and drawing defenders away from the front three, creating opportunities for Smith Rowe and others to slip them in in good positions.

That helped Town get back into the game and back from a goal behind to 1-1 – though of course they conceded from a set piece immediately afterwards and then another in the last minute as they desperately chased another equaliser, making all that hard work for nought on the day. There are plenty of other issues Town still need to work out.

But eliminating the dependency on the flanks has clear benefits for Town's attacking play, and we've seen that in the increase in goals in games Smith Rowe has started.

Even if the man himself isn't at the club next season, his presence has at least given Terriers fans some light at the end of the tunnel and a suggestion that they are beginning to get to grips with how to use a number 10 to break sides down.

This article first appeared on 26th March 2020.