Carlos Corberan happy with cautious approach as Huddersfield settle for point

Carlos Corberan said his Huddersfield side had to take fewer risks in order to seal a point against fellow strugglers Birmingham.

In truth, the 1-1 draw was low on quality with the result doing neither side any huge favours in their respective battles to stay up.

Fraizer Campbell opened the scoring just after the hour mark with a fine, lashed effort from the edge of the box.

But City restored parity just four minutes later when Marc Roberts bundled the ball home from close range after a loose corner fell his way.

Corberan admitted his side needed a positive reaction after a heavy defeat by Preston last time out.

He said: “I think the team gave a lot of effort tonight. We wanted to go for the three points and after we went ahead we couldn’t defend the lead.

“But I saw a lot of effort from my players and a good competitive level from them to help get the point we got.

“You can look at it two ways. We were going for the three points. I’m happy with the competitive level, but we didn’t win the game.

“We had to find a better balance between taking risks and avoiding counter-attacks like when Preston scored last weekend. We decided to go longer and take fewer risks tonight. It’s important to learn to make chances without giving up chances.

“It’s important for the players to do things that they feel comfortable doing. We don’t want to be playing in a way that will lead to mistakes and we know we have players who can make runs in behind.

“We need to find a way that is going to make the players comfortable.”

Blues’ boss Aitor Karanka admitted a draw was probably a fair result.

He said: “I think a point was about right in the end.

“We played well in the first half.

“Once again we started loosely but we had a good comeback and I could feel that they [Huddersfield] are not the team they were at the beginning of the season.

“For us it has been a good game, for sure in the past we would have lost that game, now we are better. We have a point, we are keeping them close to us in the table.

“I think it is a good point and especially a good performance.

“We had a very good reaction [to conceding], when we are speaking about mentality, it is not a mentality problem because every single time we had one goal against us we had a very good reaction, once again today scored and today the reaction was really good and we had more chances to win the game.

“Nobody needs to apologise because if every single player who made a mistake this season had to apologise we would have all of them apologising.”