[Lord Snooty]

July 25:

On this date in 2018, Town played French giants Olympique Lyonnais at the John Smith's Stadium in a pre season friendly.

This was the pre season to our second Premier League season and confidence at the moment held no bounds. After this result we were dreaming about qualifying for Europe. This very same team would, in a couple of months time, beat Man City at the Emptihad in the Champions League and make it to the round of 16 before going out to Barcelona.

And here they were, getting beaten 3-1 by little old Huddersfield Town. Yes it was a friendly, but we'll take any crumb of comfort at this stage. It was the first game at the stadium since the death of Town and England legend Ray Wilson and so a minute's round of applause rang out before kick off.

Town started the game with David Wagner selecting new recruits Ben Hamer, Adama Diakhaby and Ramadan Sobhi all in the starting line up.

It was goal less at the break, but early in the second half Maxwell Cornet, who will be back at the stadium this week playing for Burnley, opened the scoring. Half time subs Terence Kongolo and Michael Hefele were both beaten by a defence splitting pass and Cornet took the ball round Hamer to make it 1-0.

Cornet was left to blow his own trumpet as Lyon then substituted ten of his team mates, which allowed Town to get back in the game. First Phillip Billing won a header from a corner to feed Kongolo for the equaliser. Then Laurent Depoitre, on for Steve Mounié, scored twice, firstly from good hunting down from the industrious Alex Pritchard. And then he blunderbusted his way through the French defence to fire home in the last minute and Town had won 3-1.

So the moral of this story is, don't read anything at all into pre season results. This was a very false dawn as we got stuffed every week afterwards and were relegated before Easter.