Topsy Turvy is the best why to describe the best way as to what went down last Sunday. There were thrills, spills, laughter, sadness and Phil Jones getting bodied by Moose. Apart from a mad 7 minute spell, United had their Manchester counterparts firmly under control and made them look like League 1 fodder. It was a shame that we threw away a 2 goal lead with 20 minutes left but, come on, we just drew at home with Manchester United and can be genuinely disappointed at not getting three points from the tie. So how did this match play out?
First off, the light show was back (yay...) just as I thought that it might only be reserved for midweek matches, it turns up on Sunday night. Anyway, first half. kicked to the Kop during the first half and dominated the opening exchanges and could have been one up much sooner had David De Gea not made a stunning double save to deny a John Lundstram thunderbolt and then a McGoldrick header. United were up and running shortly after however, thanks largely to Lys Mousset. Moose picked up the ball on his own on the left flank. Between him and the goal was prolific gurner and England international Phil Jones. What happened next was glorious, Moose took on Jones and absolutely bodied him to the floor. Jones looked like he was going to cry, maybe he did, Moose took a shot that was deflected by De Gea onto the onrushing shin of John Fleck and United's early dominance paid off. 1-0. You would have thought that this would have been the wake up call that the 'mighty' Manchester would have needed but it wasn't. Instead United continued to look more likely to score but apart from a quite frankly filthy David McGoldrick dummy, the score stayed the same as we went into half time. Second half and United were once again on top and found a second goal to double our lead not long into the half. It was Mousset at it again with a lovely drive from about 25 yards out that nestled into the bottom left hand corner of the Bramall Lane end net. That's 4 goals and 3 assists now on the season for the Frenchman and what a signing he has been. You can tell that he loves playing regular first team football again and it looks like the system that we play is one that he thrives under. Unfortunately, Moose would have to go off due to a tight hamstring and this is where everything started to go a bit wrong. Shortly after Mousset's departure, Manchester United woke up and put the ball in the back the net. 2-1. Ok, that's fine, surely we'll buck our ideas up now and try to regain control of the mat... Oh it's 2-2. How did this happen? Why have we let them do this!? It's 3-2 now and oh my god, we look like we've thrown this away in 7 minutes. It was surreal to watch. It was akin to our 10 minute spell against Villa last season. The fact of the matter is, no matter who the opposition is, if you're 2-0 with 20 minutes left to play, you do not let the opposition back into the game. Thankfully for United, we did manage to regroup and as we entered the first few minutes of added time Oli McBurnie fired home for his second Blades goal and our equaliser. VAR almost ruined the party but thankfully the goal was given and despite chances for both teams. A breathless game ended 3-3. For the neutral, this must have been quite an entertaining game of football but as an interested party, I don't think I've experienced an emotional rollercoaster like that game in a long time. You have to wonder what might have happened had Moose not gone off injured. His speed and ability to run at the Manchester defence put the fear of god (or should that be Moose?) Into them but once he came off, that ability to press high wasn't present as much and it allowed Manchester the opportunity to have time and space on the ball. It was a real shame to not win this match but on the bright side we keep our unbeaten run going and go into the game against Wolves this weekend 6th in the table. So despite the madcap 7 minutes, there was a lot to like in this game from a United perspective. Until next time, UTB.
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This season just feels like it's been one big, long international break. Since we started back in August there's been a grand total of 3 International breaks. It's not really felt like the season has truly got going but fortunately the international break that we've just had is the last one until March! Yay! No more interruptions! Anyway, enough about international football, it's time to look at the weekends game and the visit of Manchester United.
So how are United doing form wise? Well, unless you've been living under a rock for the past few months you'll no doubt know that Sheffield United are FIFTH in the Premier League. Fifth! I know it's still early days and all but to see my club who three years ago were bottom of League One now mixing it up with teams like Man City and Chelsea is genuinely mind boggling. Combine that with the fact that we're unbeaten in five and are still unbeaten away from home, you can't help but feel a little bit confident that we'll take something away from the game this weekend. Just before the last international break, we played Tottenham Hotspur at their new stadium in what turned out to be Mauricio Pochettino's final game as Tottenham boss. The final result was a 1-1 draw but lets be real here, that scoreline flattered Tottenham. United had multiple opportunities to score alongside the simply atrocious VAR decision that saw David McGoldrick's first Premier League goal ruled offside because of John Lundstram's big toe being offside. I think the fact that we came away disappointed with a point from a perennial top four team and Champions League finalist shows how high this team sets expectations. It was still a cracking result and it improves our record against 'traditional' (ew) top four Premier League teams to five points from a possible twelve. All in all, we all hate VAR don't we? Onto the opposition for this weekend then and it's nobody special. It's only Manchester United, no Biggy. In all seriousness, this is one of the fixtures that I think all United fans were excited to see when we were promoted back to the big time. Although Manchester United are not the tour de force they once were, it's still a team that is packed with incredible talent and should really be challenging for the top four at a minimum. How'd they do in their last game? The Red Devils come into this game on the back of a pretty convincing 3-1 win against Brighton. However, in a game where they had 21 shots on goal compared to Brighton's 6, The Reds only had 42.7% of the ball in a game that was played on home turf. You wouldn't normally associate counter attacking football with Manchester United but it seems like that's how Ole Gunnar Solskjaer likes to set up his team. Who are the key players for the men from Manchester then? Upfront, It has to be Marcus Rashford. The man who burst onto the scene 4 years ago has established himself as Man United's main man upfront and has kept up his early promise thanks to getting 51 goals in all competitions for Manchester. His ability to get in behind defenders could cause United some problems as well as his ability to strike a dead ball. In midfield, Paul Pogba is one of the most polarising men not only at Man United, but in all of football. The World Cup winner has shown glimpses of his abilities that made Manchester pay £89 million to bring him back from Juventus but those glimpses are fleeting and many Man United fans are growing frustrated with his commitment (or lack thereof) to the cause. Don't get me wrong though, on his day, Pogba is a world class performer and should be monitored closely if he does play. In defence it's a homecoming for our own Harry Maguire. Since leaving Bramall Lane, Harry has gone on to prove himself at the top level and is now the most expensive defender of all time. Not bad for a player who was playing against teams like MK Dons at the start of the decade. That's your lot then! How will we do this weekend? I think if we play like we did against Tottenham then we'll be able to make some noise but that will be a little bit tougher thanks to the absence of Dean Henderson and possibly John Egan. Simon Moore and Phil Jagielka will need to have cracking games to keep out a potent Man United frontline. I think they'll be more than capable though. Score prediction, I'm going for a sneaky 2-1 win with Mousse and Fleck bagging. As ever, UTB. Have you ever been on classic football shirts? If you haven't, I strongly recommend that you do because it's basically a football shirt collectors wet dream (ahem). There are hundreds upon hundreds of football shirts and memorabilia that you can buy for a pretty reasonable price. I myself managed to pick up a late 90's Blades away shirt on there and it's just a good place to while away a few hours looking at all the shirts they have. That wasn't paid for by classic football shirts at all (although if they are willing to give me some free shirts, I'd gladly accept the offer) but, you may be wondering what this website/shop has to do with Sheffield United defeating Burnley on Saturday. Well, during the summer, I bought two scarves from CFS (buying scarves in the summer? I know right?) one was a lovely Adidas Japan scarf from the 2006 World Cup and the other was a Palermo scarf. Up until recently, I haven't had a chance to wear the scarves but when we played Arsenal, I wore the Palermo scarf and lo and behold we won. So when I was on my way out of the house on early Saturday afternoon, I saw my scarf on the side and without thinking twice picked it up and put it on and again, we beat Burnley. Long story short, it's not actually United being absolutely fantastic and destroying Burnley to the point that I think that many of the fans behind the goal on Bramall Lane Lower Tier will get cold sweats whenever they see John Lundstram's face pop up somewhere. No. The reason we won is because I wore my scarf. Suffice to say, it's not coming off anytime soon. So now we know the scarf story, let's take a look at the match.
United came into this match on the back of a creditable draw away at Olympic Retail Park and were looking to increase our unbeaten run in the Prem to four games. Burnley on the other hand had taken a pretty unfortunate loss at home to a Chelsea team managed by a certain ex England player. Although the scoreline read 4-2 to The Blues, Burnley had plenty of opportunities in the game to score and if those chances had gone in it could have been a completely different game. Anyway, enough build up, United made one change from the week before with Lys Mousset coming back into the starting XI replacing Callum Robinson. The match started with The Blades bombing forward and quickly putting Burnley on the back foot. Mousset could have added a third goal in three games had he managed to get anything on a brilliant ball in from the right from Basham. Burnley didn't seem to have an answer to the high intensity Blades and United took the leads thanks to a sweeping move that saw Mousset divert a low cross into the path of an onrushing Lundstram with the Liverpudlian more or less recreating his goal against Palace earlier in the season in the process. 1-0 and it's the least United deserved. Burnley attempted a comeback but their direct style of play was by and large ineffective and apart from a shout for a penalty, created very little. Just as it looked like Burnley were getting into it, ya boy Lundstram struck again with a sliding effort almost unhooking the net at the BLE. Almost immediately from the kickoff it was 3-0 with John Fleck managing to slide home after a lovely ball from Mousset. Not long after that, the half time whistle blew and what a performance. Hopefully, the second half will be just as exciting? Although there were no goals in the second half, United still managed to create opportunities with David McGoldrick orchestrating the play like a bald Mozart. Although he doesn't score regularly and he has come under some heat this season due to his lack of efficiency in front of goal, McGoldrick is vital to the creativity of the team with his link up play making us look extremely dangerous. It's no wonder that when he was injured both ourselves and Ireland suffered in the attacking department. A brilliant side rule pass from Dave saw Billy Sharp in one on one with Pope and amazingly, Sharp missed! That has to be a collectors item. Would Burnley make us pay for missing chances? No. Not at all. They were about as useful in front as goal as Blind Pew and that's doing a disservice to Blind Pew. Lundstram almost scored a hat trick (the ABSOLOUTE SCENES if he would have) but apart from that, United saw out a game that was as comfortable a Premier League match as you would like. So it's 4 games unbeaten now for United and it's a third clean sheet in four games. Not only that but our win puts us 6th in the league, 6th! I know it's only early days but wow. What an achievement. To say we are proving all the doubters wrong is an understatement and the fact that we now go into games against both Tottenham and Man Utd being above both teams was unimaginable 4 years ago. It's been an incredible journey with Chris Wilder at the helm, long may it continue. As ever, UTB. |
AuthorHi my name is John and i will be giving my thoughts on the blades matches and all blades related news in this section Archives
November 2022
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