No excuses – straight-talking Tom Lees delivers blunt Huddersfield Town analysis

The experienced defender was one of Huddersfield Town’s better performers in their 1-0 opening-night reverse to Burnley.

Despite the narrowness of the scoreline, it was an evening when the Terriers were comfortably second-best to a Clarets side who handed out six debuts.

Lees fully concurred and was in no mood to dress things up afterwards as Danny Schofield’s first match in full-time charge ended in disappointment.

Equally, he was in no mood to use the upheaval from pre-season which had seen head coach Carlos Corberan and leading players Lewis O’Brien and Harry Toffolo leave as a mitigating factors.

The centre-half said: “It’s been a busy couple of weeks and it is different because they are different personalties. But you are going to get that with any manager. No two managers are the same.

“We have just got to forget all that now and get on with it and none of that was an excuse. We have just got to get on with it and attack the season and the only way is up, so to speak.”

Town did not muster a single effort on target against Burnley as they also failed to do in the play-off final at Wembley and Lees is the first to admit that Friday’s display was sub-standard and needs to be comprehensively bettered at Birmingham on Friday.

He added: “The first-half was a bit of a wake-up call and reality check. We were off it in every aspect, physically and maybe a bit tactically. We could have been a lot more than 1-0 down.

“I am sure the head coach can look at it and say that we didn’t go under and give up. But I think that is a given at this club and we have shown that before that we don’t do that.

“We came out and had a go in the second half, but it was a bit of a whimper really. We didn’t really hurt or affect them too much.

“Burnley have got a lot of different players to what they have had in the Premier League and they are playing a totally different brand of football now.

“It was a chance early on to get on top of them and see how well they have adapted to that change. But they outplayed us and that was quite clear in the first half.”