Huddersfield Town’s Blue and White Foundation Members have voted Jonathan Hogg for their player of the month in January.
The midfielder then spoke to the media to thank the fans and discuss the Premier League game against Bournemouth on Sunday.
‘Hoggy’ featured in five of Town’s six games during January, within which he recorded a 73% tackle success rate, and recovered the ball on 152 occasions.
Hogg is “happy” to have been picked for the award
Speaking to HTTV after being congratulated on his award, Hogg said: “It’s nice to see than fans see the hard work we put in off the pitch. Its nice to be noticed.”
Town’s vice-captain recognised and admitted that they’re going through a tough run of the games at the moment and commented: “We’ve been going through a tough period but we need to all dig in and start performing a bit better.”
The award should give the diminutive midfielder some confidence going forward into a crucial run of games: “Things haven’t been going too easy, too good, too well over the last six weeks, so its been tough for us, but everyone has got to dig in whether we’re losing or winning games.”
“I’m really happy the fans have picked he out of the team and its an honour,” Hogg added.
Town have the quality to score goals
When reflecting on the Birmingham City FA Cup game which Town won 4-1, it should give the Terriers a boost, and Hogg believes it will give the Club some confidence, as he said: “The attacking players will hopefully get some confidence from it, and believe in themselves that they can hit the back of the net.”
“That’s what we need – if we don’t score goals we won’t win games, so we’ve seen that in recent weeks. We need to improve on going forward and scoring goals. We’ve got it there, we know we can do it – we’ve got the players, we’ve got the quality to do it – it’s just taking our chances when we get them,” the 29-year-old said.
Town need a win to get their ‘mini-season’ started
Town have a run of games now, in which 7 of the next 8 rank a 2 in the Fixture Difficulty Ranking according to the Fantasy Premier League. They can see this as a ‘mini- season’ as this is where they need to start picking up points again, and making there way back up the table.
On this, Hogg said: “We’re still in with a fight. We’re in the bottom three now and I’m hoping that kicks us on a bit. It can only help us because we’re underdogs again and we like being underdogs. We like proving people wrong and I hope that’s what it does – it kicks us off because people will vote us off now and we need to come back fighting.”
Bournemouth, who are currently top of the form table, are sitting in 9th in the league table, but it is only in these recent weeks, where they have had a few good results, where they’ve been able to move up the league.
“We’re up to 11/12th place if we get two wins on the bounce – which is a lot easier said than done – but if you can do that then you can do that then things don’t start looking too bad,” he commented.
“We need that win and we need it quick, and we all know that. We’re going to try our best to turn the results around.”