3 in 5

Blogged for immortalisation.

I crashed early last night, thanks to the unwelcome attention of some viruses. That meant that when I headed off to Slumberland, my beloved Sheffield United were trailing 0-1 at the attractively-named Weston Homes Community Stadium in Colchester. Still, there wasn’t much that I could do about that from Cape Town and so I went to sleep, unhappy, but safe in the knowledge that my decision wouldn’t affect the match.

And then I woke up this morning, and before leaving the sanctity of the duvet, I swiped the phone to find out that we were uniformly dreadful, that we’d gone 0-2 down, were still 0-2 down with 7 minutes to play AND THEN WE SCORED 3 GOALS IN 5 MINUTES TO WIN IT!

Wowzers.

Some ‘big club’ fans will point out that it was “only” Colchester United, and they’d be right. But the Blades couldn’t have beaten (for example) Chelsea last night because they weren’t playing Chelsea. You can only beat the team you’re playing, and given the rules and regulations around paying one’s players, United aren’t in a position to have a Diego Costa or an Angel di Maria in the squad right now. So if we have to play Colchester, and we beat them – especially in such a dramatic way – well, I’ll happily settle for that.

The crowd was just over 3,000 last night. Tiny. If ever there was a sign that we’re in the wrong league, it’s the fact that we are getting almost 20,000 fans in to watch a game against Rochdale. Something needs to happen this year and yes, it’s early days, but we’re now unbeaten in seven games and there’s already a hint of the infamous 2003 season about this campaign. We won absolutely nothing that year, but we came awfully close to winning a lot of stuff.
I’ll settle for a simple promotion this time around though – and what better way to do it than with 3 goals in 5 minutes to win all our games?

UPDATE: They’ve even done a “real time” video of the comeback. Nice.

A tale of two… Uniteds

Last night’s Carling Cup action brought shocks galore – if by ‘galore’ you count four Premiership teams falling to lower league opposition.

The big one for most people was the hilarious 4-0 drubbing of Manchester United by League 1’s MK Dons. As was noted by one astute individual – Louis van Gaal looked like he was about to cry:

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And while it was funny, it was also sad that Shrewsbury’s win at Leicester was overlooked, and that West Ham’s home defeat to the mighty Red And White Wizzzzards of Sheffield United didn’t make more headlines. Yet another Premiership scalp after our amazing cup run last season,and, given that this was the first meeting of the teams since the infamous Tevezgate scandal, an especially nice one to take.

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The Blades had to work hard for their win on penalties, but to take a young team down south to a Premiership ground, hold them for 120 minutes and then pop in five out of five penalties is no mean feat. No wonder Nigel was happy.

No real point to this blog post save to record this for posterity. And that has now been done.

End of season rumination

It’s that time of the football season when everyone starts wondering about next season (with the mild irritant of the World Cup not withstanding). Not this chap, of course. He’s upset because he doesn’t like something that a lot of other people do like and he’s comparing it to archaeology because that’s also something that over a quarter of the World’s population enjoy on a weekly basis, so it’s totes a completely valid comparison. I would say that I’m sorry that he doesn’t like football, but that would be lying because I actually don’t give a toss that he doesn’t like football.

MOAR FOOTBALL PLEASE!

And so to the real subject of this post, which is not whiny people who choose their friends poorly and can’t use an iPod or change a radio channel, but… FOOTBALL!

The way Sheffield United finished off this season was little short of spectacular, which was great because we (easily) avoided the ignominy of relegation and we almost (almost) even made the playoffs. This, however, is not so good, because it has raised expectations ahead of next season and left us thinking that we are favourites to win the league and be promoted, just like we were this season, when we nearly got relegated. Even I am getting my hopes up and I’m notoriously boring and rational. It’s stoopid.

Those hopes and dreams can be easily shattered. Look at Liverpool. So near, and yet so far. The Tall Accountant always believed that they could go all the way and win it, but it just wasn’t to be.
We’ve all done it: “We could have won the league, if only… if only… if only…”

Well, for the TA’s delight and delectation, here it is! The definitive way that Liverpool could have won the league: If Only Goals Scored By English Players Counted:

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Yep. Even with Luis’ fantastic contribution, Liverpool would have won the league. Man U would have done ok, Arsenal would have been nowhere and Champions Manchester City would have been relegated as joint lowest scorers with Newcastle – just 4 goals each. Half of Norwich’s goals were scored by English players, but then they only got 28 in the real world. Cardiff did surprising well, with 70% of their goals being scored by English players, despite them not being English club. Madness, ne?

I’d love to work this out for Sheffield United (who have 19/32 English players in their squad), but given that it (cleverly) takes into account the nationality of the players scoring against us as well, it’s just too complicated. Four of our top five scorers were English, but then… do you count own goals too? And if so, only by English players?

Let’s just assume we’d have won the league as well. Just like we’re going to next season.
Right?

Very Proud

Wow. What an intense 90 minutes of football yesterday. How good was that match compared with the dull sterility of Saturday’s semi-final? It must have been brilliant for the neutrals. Sadly, I’m not a neutral in this particular case and it was a sad end to our amazing FA Cup run, but what a way to go out. As the Nike adverts surrounding the field repeatedly proclaimed:

If you go down in flames, at least you were on fire.

And yes, we were. Aside from fifteen crazy minutes just after half time, including that one Ricky Villaesque run from Tom Huddlestone [“Tackle him! TACKLE HIM!!!”], we matched Premiership Hull City blow for blow and the team made us all very proud. Gone was the Wembley “stage fright” from previous visits, as we went all out for it from the first minute. From the Yorkshire Post:

Yesterday, dreams of becoming the first team from the third tier of English football to reach the FA Cup final died amid Hull’s superior football. But in a first half where United assumed control and then a late rally that briefly brought hope of forcing extra time, Clough’s men did their superb travelling army of fans justice.
No wonder that the hordes from Sheffield afforded their players a standing ovation at the final whistle. It was thoroughly deserved, and not just for yesterday’s efforts with the manner in which Clough has transformed the Blades being nothing short of remarkable.

The future is looking bright.

I went through every kind of emotion over the 90 minutes and together with the heat (and possibly a couple of rather strong homebrewed wheat beers), it left me completely exhausted. I’m not quite sure what state the Blades players were in, but if the Sheffield Star is to be believed, they had some… er… “male issues” at the final whistle.

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Hmm. “Prostate on the turf”? Some problems with their R’s there.

Thankfully, all I had to do was wander upstairs to my (stupidly hot) bedroom. Many of the United fans had a long trip back up from London, arriving back in Sheffield well after midnight.

All in all, an amazing effort and a magical cup run, which started away against Colchester United early last November.

We’ll just have to win it next year instead…

Wembley again

Big day today, as my beloved Red and White Wizards head down to Wembley Stadium for the FA Cup semi-final against Hull City. My Dad and brother will be there and I’ll try (as before) to guide them safely in. I’ve seen United in 3 FA Cup semi-finals, all of them with us in a far better situation than our current League One position. In fact, if we win today, we’ll the first club in over a century to get to the final while playing in the “third tier”.
However, our record in those semi finals is “less than great”, sitting at 0-3.

Not for want of trying though. Who could forget this amazing moment from our 0-1 defeat to Arsenal at Old Trafford in 2003?

That’s how close we were. I was sitting (obviously, I wasn’t actually “sitting” at this point, but the point still stands (pun intended)) looking right along the goalline and I still cannot explain how Seaman kept that out.

But that was then and this is now. Sadly, our recent record in Wembley games is equally poor. The omens, they are not good, but I do like this sentiment from our manager:

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Because given our circumstances and the teams we have had to play (and beat) to get to this point, we should already be proud of what we’ve achieved, but what’s the point of resting on our laurels now? It’s been the way for a while in this cup run that any step further would be something amazing. So why not go for one more?

33,000 Blades fans will be there to cheer them on:

Retail Sales Manager Lisa Crossland said:
“As quick as new merchandise is coming in, it is selling. This morning alone (Tuesday) we have sold more than 800 T-shirts, 600 flags, 300 car flags, 250 foam Wembley hands.”

I’ve long since given up on trying to predict the outcomes of Sheffield United games, save to predict them as being generally unpredictable. In getting this far, the team has already proven that we have the ability, we have the belief. Now we just have to go out and put it all into practice this afternoon.

Hold thumbs.