For once, I'm glad that I was a bit busy and wasn't able to put out this review of United's 8th loss of the season on the Monday after the game. It was either that or I just didn't want to keep on repeating the same things that I've been writing since September at least. Because yes, ladies and gentleman, Sheffield United lost another Premier League game with West Ham being the newest team to take three points away from us. The scary thing was that it was eerily similar to the Chelsea game last week except we didn't score and we didn't concede 4 goals. I've babbled enough, let's get this over with.
Changes were afoot for United with Ethan Ampadu deputising for the injured Enda Stevens in the back three. John Fleck made his return to the starting XI and Oli McBurnie also made a return to the starting lineup after starting on the bench in London. West Ham started out of form striker Sebastian Haller who had only scored twice in his previous 27 games for The Hammers. Kick off and, like last week at Chelsea, United made a quick start to the game with a wonderful ball from John Egan piercing the West Ham defence like a hot knife through butter to find George Baldock who didn't fully connect with his volley which Fabianski saved with his foot. United continued to press for an opener with crosses either narrowly evading McBurnie or finding the hands of Fabianski. And just like last week, after that 10 minute spell was over, West Ham began to look more likely to score. Jarrod Bowen was denied by a great block from Egan and Ramsdale was forced into making a good save that he pushed back into the penalty area that was thankfully cleared before a West Ham player could follow up. After all this pressure, West Ham should have taken the lead when a ball was lofted towards the right hand post of the Bramall Lane end where Soucek had the freedom of the penalty box but somehow planted the ball wide when it looked easier to score. This seemed to wake up United a bit and McBurnie forced a very good save from Fabianski with a venomous volley from just inside the box. McBurnie was at it again not long after with a header that looked destined to hit the top corner of the net but Fabianski met it with another very good save. The pressure continued with a corner that McGoldrick turned onto the base of right hand post. Despite some good chances for both teams, the first half ended 0-0, could United continue the pressure in the second half? No. They couldn't. And who else would score but the man who was on a worse goalscoring run than Oli McBurnie. A goal kick from Ramsdale went straight to a West Ham man who then weaved through our backline like they weren't even there. The ball was laid off to Haller who struck a bullet of a shot from just inside the 18 yard box that Ramsdale got a hand to but could do nothing about. 1-0 West Ham and the game was more or less done and dusted. United did have a good chance to score with Brewster playing in McBurnie with our Scottish striker hitting the bar when he was clean through on goal. That was the last act of any note in the game. United lost, we've been cut adrift at the foot of the table. Will we ever win another game? Who Knows. So we lost again and I would write 'where do we go from here?' Usually but I've done that so much lately that even quoting it makes me feel like it's overkill. We're a very bad team this season, I think that's safe to say and now the excuses about why we're so bad are very quickly running thin. 'We miss playing in front of a crowd' well, I'm sorry to tell you but every team in the country has been playing in front of empty stadiums for 5 months now and other teams are managing to win so why can't we adapt? 'Teams have spent more money than us on players we could only dream of buying, we can't compete with world class players' it might be true that teams are buying players we could only dream of having, it's not like we haven't spent money ourselves. At one point on Sunday we had three player on the pitch that we spent £20+ million pounds on, and since when did it matter if teams on paper had better players than us? It didn't bother us last season when we competed with the big boys? Why are we bringing up team superiority now? We've gone from being a team that didn't care about reputations or what the pundits were saying about our chances to compete in this league to being seemingly star struck by every team we're playing and just being happy to be in this league rather than trying to compete. Even other pretty bad teams are at least having a go at trying to beat teams whilst we twiddle our thumbs and say 'how could we possibly beat these teams?' It's very depressing to watch at the minutes and once again on Saturday we have a game that is must win if we're hoping to have any ideas about wanting to stay in this division. I guess I'll see you all after Saturday. Until then, UTB.
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For 10 minutes at the start of this match it looked like the United that stunned the League last season was back. We pressed the footballers who've played at World Cups and won Premier League's and International tournaments and forced them to make mistakes and when the opportunity to take the lead came our way we took it. We were looking comfortable and Chelsea looked a little bit rattled. Then instead of continuing what worked throughout those opening 10 minutes we regressed. We allowed Chelsea time on the ball in our half and when we did win it back just quickly recycled it back to The Blues so they could once again probe our defence. Cue goals from Abraham and Chilwell and all our good work that we did in those first ten minutes was undone once again. But it couldn't get worse could it? We never look out of a game under Wilder, we always find a way to at least look competitive. Well, in this match we didn't. Instead of coming out in the second half and trying to get ourselves back in the game we just continued to allow Chelsea to dominate us in every conceivable way and that 2-1 lead became 3 and then soon after it became 4. And not at any point during this rout did we look like we wanted to at least try and get another shot in at Chelsea's goal. So here we are then, winless since June, bottom of the league and looking like we've just forgotten how to be a competitive football team. Let's get on with the review.
Changes were afoot for United for our trip to London with Ethan Ampadu unavailable due to facing his parent club. Oli Norwood and John Lundstram were brought into the midfield with David McGoldrick replacing Oli McBurnie up top. Chelsea on the other hand retained Timo Werner in the starting XI despite rumours of him being rested. United came out of the traps fairly quickly and looked to find an opener. Thankfully we did find the opener within those first ten minutes with a great corner routine eventually seeing Basham laying a ball on to McGoldrick who cheekily backheeled a shot past Mendy in the Chelsea goal to end his run of clean sheets and, more importantly, give United a deserved lead. That was the last of the good things that happened in this game from a Blades perspective (well, apart from Sander forcing England's golden boy Mason Mount to fall on his arse, that was pretty funny) as we backed off and allowed Chelsea (more specifically Hakim Ziyech) to start gaining ground in our half and beginning to pepper Ramsdale with shots. The goal did eventually come with a weak shot from Abraham bouncing past Ramsdale and nestling in the net. How would United respond to being pegged back? Would we do what we usually do and begin to build pressure? No don't be silly, we continued to do the thing that caused us to concede and went into prevention mode and once again allowed Chelsea time and space in and around our box. Chelsea eventually did pull ahead with a goal that looked very preventable. Ziyech was at it again with a whipped ball that somehow found Ben Chilwell at the back post with the ex-Leicester man seemingly not looking like he wanted to make contact with the ball. But got goal side of Lowe and manged to beat Ramsdale to give Chelsea the lead. Thankfully before Chelsea could further pile on more misery, the half time whistle blew and United went into the interval 2-1 down but still very much in the game. Could we do what we did last season at Stamford Bridge and get something out of this game? No. No we couldn't. Because instead of coming out and competing and trying to have a shot on goal we just continued to do what we did in the first half. Give Chelsea the ball, give them time and space to create something in our half and wait until our opposition scored. Which Chelsea did, another two times. Once came from the unmarked head of 36 year old Thiago Silva who somehow evaded the attentions of players that were literally a decade younger than him to head home from just inside the six yard box. Minutes later an absolutely stupendous ball from that man Ziyech saw Werner played in and narrowly missed adding a fourth with his chip bouncing just wide of Rammers post. It didn't matter though because Werner did eventually get his goal with a brilliant ball from Lowe playing in the German who duly despatched past Ramsdale to give Chelsea a fourth and fully kill off a United comeback. Despite now being 3 goals down, United actually now tried to get shots on goal in a futile attempt to show that we were at least somewhat competitive. We didn't score and lost 4-1. Our first real score line in the Premier League where we had a pasting. I don't really want to talk about this anymore than I have to so I think I'll wrap up here. It's got to the point where I'm looking forward to the international break because at least we have a break from watching United probably lose. West Ham after the break looks like a very, very crucial game if we don't want to get cut away from our rivals. Anyway, I'll see you soon, UTB. Well, I feel like I've started this article the same way since the start of the season but the results haven't changed so why should this introduction? United once again lost with a long range strike from ex Blade Kyle Walker just before the half hour mark of the first half enough to see off United in a match where we looked very much like a lower league outfit drawing the big scary top flight team away from home in the FA Cup with the hope that a draw could get the Premier League outfit back to their place where maybe, just maybe, they'd be able to pull off a giant killing. The thing is we are both Premier League teams and both finished in the top half of the Premier League last season. And we weren't playing away at City's Etihad, we were at our own home ground. It's not the fact that we lost the game that has frustrated me and I assume you yourself dear reader. It's the fact that we didn't really look like we wanted to attack City due to the fear that they could absolutely destroy us on the counter. But that didn't seem to bother us as much last season. We threw caution to the wind last season against the big boys, that's why we managed to take 8 points from teams like Chelsea and Tottenham but this season? We look awed by playing these players whose reputation we didn't seem too bothered by last season. Anyway, let's get a bit more in depth into this game.
United made one change from our encouraging defeat last time out at Liverpool with John Lundstram dropping to the bench and Ethan Ampadu being pushed into the midfield with Max Lowe returning to the starting XI after recovering from his concussion against Fulham. Despite various injuries to their ranks, City still managed to put out a starting XI that many teams in the world could only dream of assembling. Ruben Dias and Aymeric Laporte anchored the defense with Rodri and Kevin De Bruyne playing in the midfield and despite Sergio Aguero being absent, City still fielded Raheem Sterling and Ferran Torres in his absence. The match kicked off with very little actually happening between both teams with United looking very stout defensively with the best chance of the opening exchanges probably coming after a Raheem Sterling cross found the unmarked head of Torres who's header was turned away by Ramsdale in the Blades net. The Sterling/Torres connection was at it once again not long after with a low ball from the England international finding the young Spaniard in the six yard box with Ramsdale once again pulling off a cracking save to keep the Blades on level terms. Despite the heroics of Ramsdale, United's backline was eventually breached and the player who breached the deadlock would be one of our own. Kyle Walker picked the ball up from about 25 yards out and sent a shot flashing towards the United goal that evaded the outstretched hand of Ramsdale and nestled into the bottom right hand corner of the Kop net. Usually going behind would have seen a resurgence from United and at least an attempt to attack our opponents net but that didn't happen. We continued to sit back and try and contain City to just the one goal. We did mange to hold City to just the one goal as we entered the half time break. It was more of the same in the second half with United not coming out of the half time break full of fire but instead looking more frightened of City. There were no real stand out attempts by City in the second half but you felt like it was just a matter of time before they scored a second goal and put themselves out of reach. Somehow, they didn't manage to get that second goal and United grew into the game a little as the match went on. That doesn't necessarily mean we were creating clear cut opportunities or even long shot opportunities. We just looked content to just have the ball out of our half for a little bit. John Lundstram probably went closest for us during the second half with a pull back from Sander seeing our contract rebel sending his effort flying over the bar when it was perhaps easier to get his effort on target. That was the last chance of note that United got in the game and despite some late pressing from City, the match ended 1-0 and United's search for a first win of the season continues. So where do we go from here? Because clearly something isn't going right within the Blades at the minute. Is it our formation? Is it our choice of personnel? Is it the injuries? Is it the lack of fans in the ground? I could go on and on and on with questions about what's going wrong for United at the minute but I honestly don't really have an answer as to how we get out of this funk we're in. If we have real ambitions about staying in this league longer than two seasons then we really need to buck our ideas up and start grinding out results because otherwise it's going to be a very, very long season. Anyway, I'll leave you with that and I'll see you after the match on Saturday against Chelsea. Until next time, 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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