Sheff U (a) match thread - The Dane Whitehouse Experience

[loyalroyal4life]

just listened to donuts after match blurb... sounded just like billy big watch before he went. he actually thought Reading played well..

until we get some pace in the defence we have no chance of playoffs..

well that aint going to happen this season unless a miracle happens and we go in for Bertrand on loan

[Jeffers217]

its a shame we didnt collect 3 points tonight as realistically we need to win our next 2 games to have any chance of scraping into the top 6

Give up and enjoy the fact that we're most likely playing in this division next season again, a reasonable expectation with the chairman's investment into the club and the distinctly average players we have at the club at present

[SpaceCruiser]

At least we didn't lose.

+1

[loyalroyal4life]

its a shame we didnt collect 3 points tonight as realistically we need to win our next 2 games to have any chance of scraping into the top 6

Give up and enjoy the fact that we're most likely playing in this division next season again, a reasonable expectation with the chairman's investment into the club and the distinctly average players we have at the club at present

[weybridgewanderer]

its a shame we didnt collect 3 points tonight as realistically we need to win our next 2 games to have any chance of scraping into the top 6

realistically, over 15 games, we are not going to make up almost half a point a game on a team currently in the top 6 without at least one of the other 7 teams around us doing so as well.

[Libertine]

Arggggh!! It sounds like we fielded a squad to make sure we got a point, which we did. Which is all fine and dandy except imo we really needed the 3 points. Long all alone up front? Hmmmmmm...

I really thought after we sold Gylfi, without trying to replace the goals we lost with his departure, we would finish mid table. Then we overachieved a bit and threatened the top 6. Now we are settling back to where we probably should/would be. At least I hope we get to see some of the kids down the stretch to gauge what we have for the future.

[Barry the bird boggler]

Managerial cock up to my mind. 4-5-1 away v a team that is as hopeless as Sheff Utd and, surprise, surprise we rediscover our non goalscoring touch that we had before Leigertwood and a consistent 4-4-2.

Should have played Gunnarsson and Howard or gunnarsson and Tabb with HUNT alongside Long.

Sounded absolutely appling on the radio and Tim Dellor said the performance was dire (a team with any quality would have put Sheffield out of their misery in the 1st half) - only to have Heston big it up afterwards and say it was good!

[Wimb]

Managerial cock up to my mind. 4-5-1 away v a team that is as hopeless as Sheff Utd and, surprise, surprise we rediscover our non goalscoring touch that we had before Leigertwood and a consistent 4-4-2.

Should have played Gunnarsson and Howard or gunnarsson and Tabb with HUNT alongside Long.

Sounded absolutely appling on the radio and Tim Dellor said the performance was dire (a team with any quality would have put Sheffield out of their misery in the 1st half) - only to have Heston big it up afterwards and say it was good!

^^^^ This

I do not understand why he's reverted to a system that was getting us draws at the start of the season, when the move to 4-4-2 was arguably which kick-started our season. He can't honestly believe that he doesn't have a combination of 2 midfield players that can make a 4-4-2 work.

Tactics/Selection recently have been very baffling.

[Hoop Blah]

I imagine we went 4-5-1 because any 2 from the 3 of Gunnarsson, Howard and Tabb wasn't going to be good enough to contain Sheff Utd enough to give us a solid foothold in the game.

I can understand doing that, especially as Long has been in good nick and our back four haven't been the most convincing.

[brendywendy]

i do think weve cocked up there- long started to fire in the goals and we started winning when hunt and ledge played.
once theyre back well be up and running again, but it will probably be too late

[Hoop Blah]

i do think weve cocked up there- long started to fire in the goals and we started winning when hunt and ledge played.
once theyre back well be up and running again, but it will probably be too late

It's the product of not having enough quality in the squad. We've cut our cloth, now we're just seeing the results of that cloth cutting.

If we'd just had a little more depth to the squad, in quality that is, we may have turned these games into a better set of results to keep us a little more in contention. It was just as much the long run of results where we failed to take key chances to turn draws into wins and loses into draws that have left us where we are though.

Long was the biggest culprit, but at the same time it's not his fault that the manager didn't take the decision to drop him or didn't feel he had enough quality in the squad to be able to do so.

[Jeffers217]

Managerial cock up to my mind. 4-5-1 away v a team that is as hopeless as Sheff Utd and, surprise, surprise we rediscover our non goalscoring touch that we had before Leigertwood and a consistent 4-4-2.

Should have played Gunnarsson and Howard or gunnarsson and Tabb with HUNT alongside Long.

Sounded absolutely appling on the radio and Tim Dellor said the performance was dire (a team with any quality would have put Sheffield out of their misery in the 1st half) - only to have Heston big it up afterwards and say it was good!

^^^^ This

I do not understand why he's reverted to a system that was getting us draws at the start of the season, when the move to 4-4-2 was arguably which kick-started our season. He can't honestly believe that he doesn't have a combination of 2 midfield players that can make a 4-4-2 work.

Tactics/Selection recently have been very baffling.

None of Tabb, Howard or Gunnarsson are good enough to pay in a 4-42 formation as it would expose them. The only partnership we have at the club that can effectively play 4-4-2 are Karacan and Ledge. That is why we desperately need a decent attacking play maker because they would be able to play in either formation

[handbags_harris]

I imagine we went 4-5-1 because any 2 from the 3 of Gunnarsson, Howard and Tabb wasn't going to be good enough to contain Sheff Utd enough to give us a solid foothold in the game.

I can understand doing that, especially as Long has been in good nick and our back four haven't been the most convincing.

Deary me, finally, someone who can actually see wood for trees. Does anyone seriously think Tabb and Howard would be able to handle the physical battle teams like Sheff Utd bring? Does anyone seriously think that Gunnarsson could handle a whole 90 in a two man midfield? Three in midfield was the only sensible option available to McDermott and I, for one, absolutely agree with him when he says we played well because we did. What we lacked, and it's been a trait all season long, is the finishing touch and that is what will separate us from those finishing in the playoffs this year. I would criticise McDermott with one comment though: I don't care about going for it. We had one more sub left when we went 1-0 up, and we had Howard and McAnuff in the middle. We're away, defending a 1-0 lead, and we have little beef in the middle. It was crying out for a defensive substitution.

Those of you who listened to Dellor last night, the basic summary I got was that he felt it was the worst performance of the season. I'm stunned by that assessment, absolutely stunned because his assessment is just wrong, and I never say that to or about someone unless it's an argument I can win with bare facts. A team that creates chances, has by far the better of a game, dominates an opponent on his own turf, is NOT a team that played poorly. Much like Dellorgate with Rodgers last season, we played decently against Scunthorpe and failed to take a host of chances against them, and his suggestion was that we played worse than we did in the 4-2 defeat to Victor Moses-inspired Crystal Palace. Utterly ludicrously flawed logic. The only aspect of our game that was missing was the finishing touch. We attacked well, very well, although the inevitable view will be that the chances created were in spite of, as opposed to as a direct result of the formation and players, and on another day and with a little more luck (we've not had any at all this last few weeks) we walk away with a more than comfortable victory.

[Wimb]

Play Tabb and Gunnar for 60 mins, or Tabb and Howard for 60 mins and then use your bench perhaps? I think all three of them have shown the ability to battle, and being 4-4-2 doesn't mean that Hunt/Long don't/wont drop back and lend a hand. Like I said, Howard and Tabb behind Gylfi were a very effective midfield last year, not sure how much having Gylfi impacted their own performances.

Has football really evolved so much that we have only 1 out of 5 central midfielders who don't need their hand held by Legs in a 4-4-2....
Do take the point about the particulars of how the Blades play though Harris and I trust McD far more then my own opinions, it's just frustrating in the least to suggest we NEED Leigertwood to function in a 4-4-2.

[Hoop Blah]

I listened to some of Dellors commentry and I think he said it was the worst game of the season, not our worst performance. Slight difference but then he may have meant both.

Wimb, football hasn't evolved that much no, but our midfielders just aren't that good. It's not a case of stamina which might be solved by rotating the 3 by subbing one off it's a case of being dynamic enough at any point. Gunarsson has been slowing down for years and can't do it anymore. Howard just doesn't have it in him.

Last season, with Sigurdsson, we kept the ball a lot more and so it was easier to keep a shape and cover each other. It also meant that Tabb and Howard had a bit of support (and that's as much in distracting the oppositions midfield by the threat of Sigurdsson playing between their midfield and back four) and needed to be better on the ball to work with Sigurdsson. Also, don't forget that last season we had Bertrand flying down the left. He was like another midfielder because he could cover so much ground.

It's not something new to us, Pardew had to do exactly the same thing when he ended up playing Hughes as that 3rd midfielder because we weren't strong enough without the extra player.

[Wimb]

Yeah fair points just a sad state of affairs tbf and feel maybe it was worth the gamble in what was a must win game.

[RobRoyal]

Another good post, Handbags.

Agree that 4-5-1 was the only sensible option last night, at least to start. We definitely did enough to win the game in terms of carrying a threat - it was only substandard finishing that stopped us from going in ahead at half-time, though our set-piece delivery was disappointing throughout.

[handbags_harris]

its a shame we didnt collect 3 points tonight as realistically we need to win our next 2 games to have any chance of scraping into the top 6

This kind of comment pisses me off. Do the other 13 games that we have afterwards not count as much? Two frickin games out of 46 is not going to make or break our season, much like the last 4 games won't either. The likelihood is that we now won't make the playoffs, but we have a team that is incredibly difficult to beat, particularly at home, and with more luck and slightly better judgement there is no reason why we can't make a concerted late push for them.

[Snowball]

its a shame we didnt collect 3 points tonight as realistically we need to win our next 2 games to have any chance of scraping into the top 6

This kind of comment pisses me off. Do the other 13 games that we have afterwards not count as much? Two frickin games out of 46 is not going to make or break our season, much like the last 4 games won't either. The likelihood is that we now won't make the playoffs, but we have a team that is incredibly difficult to beat, particularly at home, and with more luck and slightly better judgement there is no reason why we can't make a concerted late push for them.

I felt we "HAD TO" win at Sheffield not because I can't count. We COULD still finish second on 87 points with WWWWWWWWWWWWWWW in our next 15 games.

But it felt like a must-win game because

(a) it was one of the games where (theoretically) we had a strong winning chance and a win compensates for going to Leeds/Forest.

(b) It comes on the back of DLL and not-winning may affect confidence.


But we HAVE lost so much ground that we know almost certainly that we need at least two WWW's between now and the season's end, as well as a fair few other wins AND hurting our rivals.

15 games and we really need 30 points, (73) which might not be enough

CERTAINLY not impossible, but it's a lot easier if we (say) win our next 3. Then it's 21 from 12

[handbags_harris]

Play Tabb and Gunnar for 60 mins, or Tabb and Howard for 60 mins and then use your bench perhaps? I think all three of them have shown the ability to battle, and being 4-4-2 doesn't mean that Hunt/Long don't/wont drop back and lend a hand. Like I said, Howard and Tabb behind Gylfi were a very effective midfield last year, not sure how much having Gylfi impacted their own performances.

Has football really evolved so much that we have only 1 out of 5 central midfielders who don't need their hand held by Legs in a 4-4-2....
Do take the point about the particulars of how the Blades play though Harris and I trust McD far more then my own opinions, it's just frustrating in the least to suggest we NEED Leigertwood to function in a 4-4-2.

They sure were, in a 4-2-3-1 formation that you purport to be inferior to 4-4-2. The fact is that of the last 19 games of last season (which is as far back I could be arsed to trawl) we played 4-4-2 twice and admittedly spanked opposition out of sight - Sheffield Wednesday 5-0 and Coventry City 3-0, but we played the classic big man little man partnership: Church and Rasiak. The other 17 games we played 4-2-3-1, mainly with Long on his own, scored 33 goals and lost 5 games (one in dubious circumstances - Ipswich Town 1-2, and two against Villa and Newcastle). The rest of the games we were superior in the vast majority of games, the only two we were bettered were Blackpool (0-2) and Watford (0-3), both rare off days then.

My own instinct is that we are still, even without Sigurdsson, better off with 4-2-3-1 than 4-4-2, but if we're to play 4-4-2 I'd like to see a Leigertwood/Howard pairing in a 4-4-2 with whoever to support Long up top (neither Hunt or Church are good enough IMO, particularly Church who clearly McDermott doesn't rate as he has started a mere 17 of the last 52 games in all competitions). I'd prefer 4-2-3-1 with the same pairing and with Tabb just behind Long as a lone front man. Whenever Howard plays we just look a much better, more potent outfit, but I think the Howard/Tabb pairing (despite the run last season) lacks beef, and this is exactly why McDermott played the excellent Gunnarsson last night alongside both.