Next Up: Exeter City vs Huddersfield Town

With City’s League One status secured on Good Friday, Monday’s match at relegation-threatened Crawley clearly meant more to the home side, who dominated throughout in a deserved 3-1 victory that had Gary Caldwell bemoaning his side’s attitude. The home faithful, already losing patience after a poor run at SJP, won’t stand for anyone being “on the beach” in the final home game of the season, no matter how meaningless it is for both clubs. Caldwell appears to have one eye on next season with his selections, with Andrew Oluwabori getting his first start at Crawley in the continued absence of Josh Magennis, while Tom Dean made his league debut off the bench. Further changes may occur on Saturday, and it will be interesting to see particularly if Caleb Watts starts, given he was hauled off at half time at Crawley despite his goal giving City a potential foothold and given his superb performance against Burton on Good Friday.

Tipped for an immediate return to the second tier, it hasn’t worked out that way for Huddersfield despite the addition of two strikers of proven pedigree at this level in January in the shape of Joe Taylor and Dion Charles. A horrible run in 2025 culminated in Michael Duff losing his job, but replacement Jon Worthington has overseen just two wins and six defeats since assuming the manager’s role. In addition the club announcing hefty losses won’t have helped the long-term prospects of the Terriers especially now the playoffs are mathematically out of sight. While Taylor has scored twice, Charles has failed to find the net at all, meaning both strikers are already being considered as flops. Instead, Josh Koroma and Callum Marshall (both nine league, ten overall) continue to be the main goal threat.

There was little sign of the trouble to follow for Huddersfield as they cruised to a 2-0 win in the reverse fixture back in October through goals from Pearson and Wiles. Their last two visits to the Park have been very fruitful with four goals scored on each occasion – latterly a 4-0 win in 11/12 through Alan Lee and a Jordan Rhodes hat-trick. With four straight wins in this fixture, Huddersfield have built a league head to head lead with 12 wins to City’s eight, five matches finishing level.

The match officials for this game will be:-

Referee: Ollie Yates
Assistant Referees: Richard Morris and Harley McKittrick
Fourth Official : Adrian Quelch

Ollie Yates took charge of the 4-1 defeat at Stevenage in February, cautioning Gary Caldwell . Previous to that he last took charge in November 2023 when Exeter played Swindon away in the EFL Trophy, a game that City won 1-0. Prior to that game, Ollie too charge of a 2-0 defeat for City away at Portsmouth in January 2023. So far this season he has taken charge of 26 games showing 119 yellow cards and sending off five players.

Interview with Gary Caldwell

Interview with Ryan Woods