It was only a friendly, but Huddersfield Town did not quite look ready for the rigours of the Premier League in Wednesday’s 2-1 defeat to Udinese.
A delightful individual goal from Tom Ince aside, there was precious little else from David Wagner’s men in their only pre-season test on home soil.
A player called Lasagna scored for the Italian Serie A outfit and the performance served up by the Terriers rarely excited the 6,443 crowd.
Huddersfield are gearing up for the Premier League after a 45-year absence from English football’s top flight.
They fielded a number of new signings, with Ince the most prominent as he scored his fourth goal in five games.
The former Liverpool youngster has been signed from Derby County in a £10million switch and he opened the scoring with a strike that so typified his talents.
Collecting possession around 25 yards from goal, Ince worked his way into position to drill a low left-foot shot into the bottom right-hand corner.
The pace of the game was predictably pedestrian, but Udinese showed their mettle with two goals either side of half-time to win the match.
Their equaliser came 11 minutes before half-time when Kevin Lasagna fired home a deflected shot after trialist Dimitri Cavare carelessly gave the ball away.
Udinese scored the winner when Ryder Matos reacted quickest to reach the rebound from an Andrija Balic free-kick that had smacked the crossbar in the 75th minute.
Wagner left out Nahki Wells with Reading poised to make a £10million swoop.
The Bermuda striker has fallen way down the pecking order in Wagner’s squad and the German said: “Nahki is a player who is on the market and we will listen to offers for him.
“It isn't an easy situation but everyone can see how high the quality the strikers have is.
“We have signed Steve Mounie and Laurent Depoitre plus we also have Colin Quaner and Elias Kachunga.”
Asked if Wells will join the rest of the squad in travelling to Austria on Saturday for a week-long training camp, Wagner replied: “I am unsure at the minute. We will see how everything progresses.”
Huddersfield open their Premier League campaign with a trip to Crystal Palace on Saturday, August 12 and major improvements to the club’s John Smith’s Stadium are currently taking place.
Wagner is confident they will be ready on and off the pitch, despite the largely uninspiring display against Udinese.
He added: “It wasn't the best but that's not what pre-season is about – it is about gathering information and making steps to work with and I think we have got that.
“We had some good moments in the offence in the first half but I wasn't too happy with the shape of the defence and Udinese deserved their goal.
“In the second-half I was more pleased with the defensive shape but we were perhaps not as strong in the offence.
“We have seen we have a lot of work still to do in the next two-and-a-half weeks but I am pleased with the effort and we have seen how strong Udinese are.
“They are exactly the sort of quality we will meet in the Premier League so it was a good test for us.”
