Huddersfield Town boss Michael Duff has called on his side to “recover again” as they aim to address a second downturn in their League One campaign.

The Terriers head into tomorrow afternoon’s clash away to Stevenage having lost five of their last eight matches, a run that has left them nine points adrift of the automatic promotion places and two points inside the play-offs.

Earlier in the season, Town went on a run of seven defeats in eight games in all competitions, including four straight losses in League One that placed them 15th in the table after nine games.

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The Terriers responded with a 16-match unbeaten run in the league that propelled them into promotion contention, and Duff has sought to provide some perspective to his team’s recent run of form.

Discussing his side’s challenging situation, Duff said: “It is what it is, it’s not earning your money picking the team, it’s picking the right team, and a team that delivers a better performance than the last two.

“I think some of our results prior to that, we probably didn’t get the results that we felt we deserved. The Reading game, and I’m not sure some of the others that we lost we deserved to, but no qualms against the last two, they’ve been disjointed performances in and out of possession.

“You can use the excuse of lots of bodies (out injured), but that’s the reality of the situation, so we need to find a way.

“It’s not the end of the world. We’ve been on a worse run than this and in a worse position than this earlier in the season, but for some reason it feels worse now. We’ve not lost seven out of eight – we’re on a bad run, there’s a reality to it, but we’re still fifth.

“We’ve done it once, we had a really good start including pre-season, and had a really bad blip and recovered, now we’ve got to do it again. We’ve had a blip, we’ve got to recover again. Without being blind hope and just shutting your eyes, we have to improve on certain areas.

“We need to pass the ball better, we looked unorganised the other day (against Wigan Athletic), which is a first, and we just need simple passes. There’s a little bit of confidence in that as well.

“It’s having the understanding and trying to give the players the belief that they’ve not turned into bad players. It’s an emotional game, so it’s trying to keep them to the work that we’ve done all pre-season. We’ve had to chop and change shape a little bit, which doesn’t help, to try and fit in the roundest pegs in the roundest holes.

“It’s trying to be as positive as we can, with the realisation of where we’re at, that’s the thing. It’s easy just to throw your hands up in the air and go ‘it’s not fair, everyone else has got it easier than us’. It’s part of the job, and part of the job is shared hardship, sticking together, trusting where we’re at, trusting where we’ve been, what we’ve been through already in a fairly short space of time, and remaining positive.”