Sheff UTD (A) - Match Thread

[May Contain Nuts]

No criticism of the performance as I haven't seen it.

From the very little I have read it seems we came undone when we stopped sticking to the game plan and pushed the defence forward too much without protecting against a counter?

tbf though it won't sound bad on the radio with Ed Dawes running the narrative unchallenged by Adam Bolder who I like, but isn't there to do so.

Dawes has made his stance known with his rant against negativity, and he's not going exactly known for presenting a level headed / even / accurate view of things.

Edited 12 hours ago by May Contain Nuts

[Castor]

Not bothered about the result as it was expected, I am bothered about the performance. I know they are good side but to not have a shot on target is pretty poor. 

[Gabby'sThighs]

Thanks for the updates, couldn't watch it today. (on the train to Milan, you know how it is...)

No shame in losing to a relegated Prem team. Next! We can get something against Norwich.

[HorsforthRam]

24 minutes ago, May Contain Nuts said:

No criticism of the performance as I haven't seen it.

From the very little I have read it seems we came undone when we stopped sticking to the game plan and pushed the defence forward too much without protecting against a counter?

tbf though it won't sound bad on the radio with Ed Dawes running the narrative unchallenged by Adam Bolder who I like, but isn't there to do so.

Dawes has made his stance known with his rant against negativity, and he's not going exactly known for presenting a level headed / even / accurate view of things.

We got caught a few times with Nelson trying to run the ball out of defence and losing it. This led to the free kick they scored from. Nelson also got caught bringing the ball down a few times by Moore. Just thought he had more time on the ball than he had (or was given). I think we tried to play in the right manner (not hoof it) but Sheffield squeezed the life out of any space we tried to create. They were quicker and stronger to the second ball so our ball retention (2nd half) was really poor. We just couldn’t get our heads up. I guess the strength of an Ozoh may have allowed him to get his head up and find a pass because sometimes there were three Sheffield players on one of ours so others must have been in space but couldn’t be found. It made for a frustrating second half because we just couldn’t t mount any kind of challenge 

Edited 12 hours ago by HorsforthRam

[Crewton]

30 minutes ago, Patrick Rams said:

A recently relegated side? That's exactly the opponent I'd expect us to "take the game to"...!

Welcome back.

[TuffLuff]

An interesting game overall, if maybe not the most entertaining.

Maybe my big takeaway from today is that we have a few players like Harness, who I thought looked really good when he came on, who are on the periphary and could have been ‘bedded in’ more in terms of game time before today. You probably would gamble on having those points we currently we have, but I think a game like today would really have suited Harness, CBT (based on his performance at Pompey) and Ward. Sheff U really scouted everything we could throw at them and maybe having that second or third style that Warne could rely on, may now help us in this period before the international break. Not saying I’m right, I just think those players may have got a bit more joy when we pressed forward.

I do think we went back to how we could be in league 1 today, that we rely on a NML ‘out ball’ which again was well scouted by Sheff U. We could grind teams down in league 1, but won’t work in the championship. Think we will see the best of NML this season if he isn’t part of the build up but making runs further forward when defences are already stretched.

Sheff U are one of those champ teams that have stand out players but are in a stagnant, rigid system. It works in terms of results in this league, but I didn’t come away from that game thinking Sheff U are unbeatable. Thought there were even signs today of Moore and a couple of others getting frustrated with that ‘Wilder style’ too. They’ll be fine, but I just felt they were uninspiring all things considered. Maybe that’s down to our defensive work which I did was pretty solid.

[i-Ram]

Ah well. No big deal.
Let’s talk about how we beat them 1 nil back in 1987, when we took over 20,000 to their shitty little ground.

 

[HorsforthRam]

4 minutes ago, i-Ram said:

Ah well. No big deal.
Let’s talk about how we beat them 1 nil back in 1987, when we took over 20,000 to their shitty little ground.

 

I was stood in about the same place today 😂😂

[i-Ram]

6 minutes ago, HorsforthRam said:

I was stood in about the same place today 😂😂

I was in a different armchair.

[BramcoteRam84]

39 minutes ago, Mucker1884 said:

Having just caught up, and seen the goal, I reckon JWZ either positioned the wall wrong, or himself.  🤷‍♂️

Given the angles/trajectories/his starting position, by the time he spots the ball, he also catches sight of the post, and human nature kicks in to hold back on the spring needed in his legs to reach the ball.
Any save of that... which I believe he would technically be capable of, as excellent as the free-kick was.. would almost certainly have had us heralding him a hero, whilst simultaneously bemoaning the fact that he misses the next 3(?) games due to concussion.

Just my opinion, and of course, we will never know the outcome "Had he have saved it", but there does appear to be a lack of power in his dive.  It's almost "Half-hearted"... but as it's almost certainly "Human nature" doing its thing, rather than a conscious decision to "s***-out", any blame on him would be as per my opening line, not the lack of effort in the attempted save.

Shame really, as I reckon we'd have all gladly taken a 0-0 here.

🐏

 

 

Think Warne is questioning it as well so you’re not the only one. Issue was he only had 3 in the wall then too much of a gap. That said though while he made some big kicking errors also thought he was really good again.

[BramcoteRam84]

Watched some and listened to some of first half which it seems was our best time in the game, then watched the second half. As others have said defensive shape was excellent but on the ball we were terrible, trying to play out but slow and we were constantly pressed into mistakes. Nelson trying to break the lines running with the ball and losing it, Cash the same, Cashin’s passing today was awful. But throughout the team we weren’t good on the ball over hitting passes - even Goudmijn over hit two or three where if he’d got them right we were potentially in on goal.

No one expected anything today, at times we matched them which is good but if we could’ve kept the ball better and been a bit smarter we could’ve caused them problems and even won the game as they weren’t that great. As it was second half we didn’t lay a glove on them. 

Got to be happy after 6 games. 

[Ambitious]

It doesn’t take a genius, critic, analytic or a******* to lay out what happened: we lost to a better team with a moment of real quality. 

On the flip side: that’s the lowest xG Sheffield United have had at home since playing Arsenal in March. It shows that we were able to really restrict them to good opportunities and that’s something that we need and can count on to keep us in games. 

If we score that chance in the first 10 minutes, who knows what kind of game we would’ve seen. I do like how we can consistently restrict teams to poor quality chances, though. It’s a great trait to have. 

[MaltRam]

Didn't think it was a free kick, but we didn't set up right and got punished.

They deserved the points, but wemove on with pride, especially first half display.

They're bringing £20m players off the bench. No shame in losing that.

[Jimbo Ram]

29 minutes ago, i-Ram said:

Ah well. No big deal.
Let’s talk about how we beat them 1 nil back in 1987, when we took over 20,000 to their shitty little ground.

 

More like 10,000 wasn’t it 😊

[Van der MoodHoover]

21 minutes ago, i-Ram said:

I was in a different armchair.

I was in a different county.......😉

[Anag Ram]

35 minutes ago, TuffLuff said:

An interesting game overall, if maybe not the most entertaining.

Maybe my big takeaway from today is that we have a few players like Harness, who I thought looked really good when he came on, who are on the periphary and could have been ‘bedded in’ more in terms of game time before today. You probably would gamble on having those points we currently we have, but I think a game like today would really have suited Harness, CBT (based on his performance at Pompey) and Ward. Sheff U really scouted everything we could throw at them and maybe having that second or third style that Warne could rely on, may now help us in this period before the international break. Not saying I’m right, I just think those players may have got a bit more joy when we pressed forward.

I do think we went back to how we could be in league 1 today, that we rely on a NML ‘out ball’ which again was well scouted by Sheff U. We could grind teams down in league 1, but won’t work in the championship. Think we will see the best of NML this season if he isn’t part of the build up but making runs further forward when defences are already stretched.

Sheff U are one of those champ teams that have stand out players but are in a stagnant, rigid system. It works in terms of results in this league, but I didn’t come away from that game thinking Sheff U are unbeatable. Thought there were even signs today of Moore and a couple of others getting frustrated with that ‘Wilder style’ too. They’ll be fine, but I just felt they were uninspiring all things considered. Maybe that’s down to our defensive work which I did was pretty solid.

We ran into trouble too many times but I noticed how different we were in supporting the man on the ball.

At home we have options. Today it seemed we ran away from teammates, not towards them. 

[Sparkle]

Just got back 

keeper MOM 

defense - over run due to lack of options

midfield - average first half and disappeared second half 

forwards - not involved at all 

Subs - did not improve us at all in fact some made us worse 

we will have major problems when we go behind 

[Grumpy Git]

Anyone think Sheffield Utd were just a bit better than us?

Just sayin.

[Crewton]

3 minutes ago, Grumpy Git said:

Anyone think Sheffield Utd were just a bit better than us?

Just sayin.

That's not controversial. I think that's been the verdict from everyone who watched the game. Nobody should be too surprised - it shows us where we have to improve to beat teams like them. They've still got some of the best championship players of recent times in their squad - and a much deeper squad than we currently have. 

I'm confident they'll get a much tougher game at Pride Park and we'll pick up a few away wins against lesser quality teams.

[Kinder]

Just got home. Thought we were outplayed by a better team who have parachute money and there’s no shame in that. We needed to make a change around the hour mark, probably taking Osbourne off but who for? Harness looked tidy when he came on, but it’s stating the obvious to say we really missed Ozoh.

I’m just pleased to have got through the game without someone puking on me, there were some right casualties around me!