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Sheffield United’s meek surrender and the clackety-clacking of empty seats
‘TOUGH PLACES TO GO’
Short of munching on some sandwiches from the home dressing-room’s refreshments table during Chris Wilder’s post-match debrief on Monday, it’s difficult to imagine how Sheffield United’s players could possibly have disappointed their manager more. While nobody in their right mind, even a Premier League manager such as Wilder, would have given the Blades a snowball’s chance in hell of getting a result against Mikel Arteta’s rampant Arsenal team, the speed and meekness of their surrender must surely have raised eyebrows around Bramall Lane. It certainly raised backsides, with the clack-clack-clackety-clack-clack of hastily-vacated seats punctuating the stunned silence of the stadium as hundreds of fans decided to give up on a bad job and make for the exits after less than quarter of an hour.
While the home players deserve plenty of criticism for their lack of fight in the face of imminent relegation, Football Daily isn’t here to kick a blind man’s stick. The fact of the matter is they just aren’t good enough and cannot reasonably be held responsible for the club’s inevitable slide out of the top flight. Truth be told, the exact moment Sheffield United’s fate was sealed came before a ball was kicked this season, when the club hierarchy decided to cash in on several key players from a squad that already looked poorly equipped for the far greater challenges ahead.
Arteta diplomatically described Bramall Lane as “a really difficult place to come” in his post-match comments, but United’s home record suggests nothing could be further from the truth. The gift that keeps on giving, United’s stadium has been a happy hunting ground for most visitors, coughing up 32 points and 42 goals to various rivals in 14 games. Indeed, the only stadium proving to be more hospitable is Burnley’s Turf Moor, another ground Arsenal’s manager recently described as “one of the toughest places to go”. If there is a bright side for Blades fans, the evidence of the thousands of empty seats long before full-time against Arsenal suggests that at least Bramall Lane is not a tough place to leave.
“We’ve got to dust ourselves down and go again on Saturday,” said Wilder, whose shellshocked players have now conceded five or more goals in four of their last seven games. “I understand supporters leaving, but the noise at the end was amazing. The boys are a damaged group of players, they have had some bad defeats and they are hurting. There were some disappointing performances all over the park and if you are not at your level you are going to get punished. We could not lay a glove on them. You have to be on your level because these top teams can take you apart.”
The club does have previous in the field of pulling off miraculous escapes, even if extricating themselves from their current pickle does seem a Houdini act too far. With their tails up having scored 24 goals in their past five league games, Arsenal’s next one is at home to Brentford, an out-of-sorts team you might normally give some hope of causing an upset if only they weren’t currently missing their entire first-choice back four.
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QUOTE OF THE DAY
“If I say this now it’s probably gonna be a massive headline: tomorrow you never know what the future brings, but I’m happy” – Erling Haaland, intent on turning what should have been a straightforward Big Cup press conference into a burning wreck of a day for the Manchester City press officer, keeps things balanced before the second leg against Copenhagen.
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FOOTBALL DAILY LETTERS
I was at Goodison for the Merseyside derby in 2007, ‘refereed’, if that is the correct term, by Mark Clattenburg. For him to be in any post which requires him to comment on the ‘mistakes’ made by his successors just goes to show that if satire didn’t, in fact, die when Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize, then it must now be on life support, at best” – Tony Killen.
Here in the USA USA USA we don’t do the relegation/promotion thing, so forgive an ignorant question, but: can Sheffield United be relegated straight to League One?” – John Schaefer.
Following up on your piece on LAFC having to play in a blizzard in (Monday’s Snow Joke section – full email edition), the snow doesn’t look quite as deep as that in Uzbekistan for the Australia-South Korea Women’s U20 Asia Cup game. There are some laughable sequences of players trying to dribble through the snow. Can’t believe they didn’t clear the whole pitch” – David Branch.
Send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’ the day is … John Schaefer.
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