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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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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