Other Games 23/34/25

[frank the tank]

They sold their 2 best players - Berge and Ndiaye - last summer. Pretty much zero ambition. Then they sacked Heckingbottom too......

In reality it may as well have been an 18 team premier league with Sheffield United and Burnley being so ****in ****e this season. At least Luton are having a go

[S-RED]

Arsenal are flying, they can thump anyone when on it. We’re kind of stumbling to wins. But there’s a long way to go still and the patterns can change significantly. Arsenal **** the bed in the last ten games last season, they can do again.

Tonkinfg **** teams, they have by far the hardest run in of the three; not to say momentum wont carry them along, but all three teams hae momentum currently, with both us & Arse knowing Mancs are relentless & a machine

[rudedog]

Reckon Arsenal will tonk Sheff Utd 6-0 and boost their GD tonight!

Should have stuck a tenner on that !

[John Barnes]

Should have stuck a tenner on that !

I know

[ChesterDave]

So far in 2024, Sheffield United have the fourth most goals at Bramall Lane (4), behind Brighton, Aston Villa and Arsenal.

Ha. Brilliant stat!

[peterbread]

Saw this article about Sheffield United. Holly crap no wonder they are so bad but it also makes Burnley look worse considering their points total. How they managed to get promoted with the club in that state.

It was 8am at Sheffield United’s Shirecliffe training base, four days before the start of the Premier League campaign, and you could cut the tension with a knife. That morning a member of Paul Heckingbottom’s staff had received a message from a counterpart at Burnley: a picture of the midfielder Sander Berge arriving for a medical at the Lancashire club’s Barnfield training centre.
Berge’s name was still up on a tactics board in the coaching staff’s open-plan first-floor office, along with those of the other 15 fit players expected to take part in training. The United manager, visibly incensed, had immediately picked up his phone and dialled the number of a board member. “Have you got something to tell me?” Heckingbottom enquired.
So that was how Heckingbottom found out Berge was being sold, against his wishes, four days before the visit of Crystal Palace. Ten days earlier, another shining light in Sheffield United’s automatic promotion from the Sky Bet Championship, Iliman Ndiaye, had been sold to Marseille. And to make matters worse, none of the handful of youthful recruits at that point looked ready for top-flight football.

A senior player knocked on Heckingbottom’s office door to tell the manager that the squad’s morale was on the floor. Four of United’s fit players that day had spent the previous season either on loan at Derby County in League One, Barrow in League Two, Bradford Park Avenue of the Northern Premier League Premier Division, or with the club’s under-21s.
After everything the players and staff had worked so hard to achieve the previous season — against a backdrop of unpaid bills, transfer embargoes, failed takeovers and administration fears — how could their top-flight return already have been so fatally undermined?
Sheffield United were arguably the most ill-prepared team in Premier League history. In Monday night’s humiliating 6-0 defeat by Arsenal — five down within 39 minutes, the first side in English football to lose three consecutive home league games by at least a five-goal margin — the result of such stark mismanagement was clear for all to see.

Now, the questions being posed involve Monday’s performance being the worst display, perhaps even by the worst team, in Premier League history. Chris Wilder, who replaced Heckingbottom as manager in December, said recent results have left his players “broken and damaged”, but in truth many of their bruises were self-inflicted.
It would be easy to point fingers at Wilder, whose return to the club tugged heart-strings but after a brief fillip is already threatening to turn sour; or Heckingbottom, who himself oversaw defeats of 8-0 by Newcastle United and 5-0 by Arsenal; or the players, whose first-half performance against Arsenal is widely agreed to have been one of the most abject in living memory.
The culpability for Sheffield United’s miserable state, however, ultimately lies with Prince Abdullah, the club’s Saudi owner, whose meagre financial backing and rank incompetence makes it an enduring mystery that he presided over promotions from the Championship twice in four years. Both of those ascents, though, owed everything to stellar work by Wilder and Heckingbottom, and were achieved in spite, not because, of Abdullah’s stewardship.

It is hard to recall a promoted club beginning a campaign with a team so clearly diminished from the last. Berge and Ndiaye were in the final years of their contracts and, after failing to agree new deals, the club chose to sell them for a combined total of about £32 million, on the eve of a campaign that would generate six times that sum if they survived for only one season.
Ndiaye, Berge and the on-loan Manchester City duo Tommy Doyle and James McAtee (who returned on deadline day), accounted for four of United’s top-five chance creators last season, as well as 45 per cent of their league goals. The decision to release Billy Sharp, club captain and boyhood United fan, was taken out of Heckingbottom’s hands and took no consideration of the then 37-year-old’s influence in a changing room the manager described as “fragile” after those key departures.
When replacements finally did arrive, the season was already under way and, of the ten arrivals — three of whom joined on loan, the rest for a collective £56 million — only Cameron Archer, Gustavo Hamer and McAtee were anywhere near the required standard.

Thoughts are already turning to next season and the respite of a return to the second tier. Abdullah’s attempts to sell the club have so far been in vain. A deal with the Nigerian businessman Dozy Mmobuosi collapsed last year and Mmobuosi has since been accused of fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The previous suitor, Henry Mauriss, is now serving time in a California jail for wire fraud.
No one is disputing how hard it is to bridge the gulf from Championship to Premier League, but Sheffield United never stood a chance. The loss of defenders John Egan and Chris Basham to season-ending injuries in the space of a week in September and October did not help.
There can be no accounting for the wild tackle which led to Mason Holgate’s 13th-minute red card in the 5-0 defeat by Brighton & Hove Albion last month, a week after a morale-boosting victory away to Luton Town. Jack Robinson and Vinícius Souza’s fracas ten days ago was perhaps evidence of tensions coming to the boil. But the tensions were there there from the start. How many kicks can a group of players take?

The sight of fans walking out on their struggling team long before the final whistle is a modern phenomenon. It was not the done thing to get up and walk out when I was a player, but I still know how the rejected Sheffield United and West Ham United players will have been feeling as they suffered their home hammerings by Arsenal.
In my day, that rejection of an under-performing side came in the form of stadiums that were three-quarters empty from kick-off — Premier League arenas are generally sold out nowadays — and I can tell you it was really weird. Instead of hearing a mass of cheering or jeering you could pick out individual shouts, which, given the way the team had been playing, you would rather not have heard. You have to try to shut out those isolated voices, but it’s not easy.
I remember a midweek home match I played with Chelsea against Southampton in 1991-92, the last season of the old First Division. Stamford Bridge was eerie and negative, full of echoes. The chairman Ken Bates walked into the dressing room afterwards in a furious mood and blamed us for the pitiful attendance. “You lot only sold 7,200 tickets tonight and hundreds of those were freebies,” he said.
Another time I played against Newcastle United at St James’ Park with Millwall in 1989 after the home side had already been doomed to relegation. Only 14,000 turned up at what was normally such a passionate ground, and there were demonstrations. It meant that all the pressure was on our opponents, so we could play with freedom, as Arsenal did at Bramall Lane and the London Stadium.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s even worse when the stadium is full and all your own fans are hurling abuse at you, but apathy is still unpleasant to face. It’s horrible playing in that atmosphere. You know that your supporters have either chosen to miss the action or are sitting in their seats because they can’t think of anything better to do.
I’ve always been fascinated by the interaction between players and fans, and how the latter can exert such an effect on the team they support. The opposite to Sheffield United’s predicament can be seen at the moment with Arsenal and Liverpool, who are riding a wave of optimism and exuberance created by their fans.

[vlahka]

I find it shocking that a businessman called Dozy is up for fraud.

[Deano]

Saw this article about Sheffield United. Holly crap no wonder they are so bad but it also makes Burnley look worse considering their points total. How they managed to get promoted with the club in that state.

It was 8am at Sheffield United’s Shirecliffe training base, four days before the start of the Premier League campaign, and you could cut the tension with a knife. That morning a member of Paul Heckingbottom’s staff had received a message from a counterpart at Burnley: a picture of the midfielder Sander Berge arriving for a medical at the Lancashire club’s Barnfield training centre.
Berge’s name was still up on a tactics board in the coaching staff’s open-plan first-floor office, along with those of the other 15 fit players expected to take part in training. The United manager, visibly incensed, had immediately picked up his phone and dialled the number of a board member. “Have you got something to tell me?” Heckingbottom enquired.
So that was how Heckingbottom found out Berge was being sold, against his wishes, four days before the visit of Crystal Palace. Ten days earlier, another shining light in Sheffield United’s automatic promotion from the Sky Bet Championship, Iliman Ndiaye, had been sold to Marseille. And to make matters worse, none of the handful of youthful recruits at that point looked ready for top-flight football.

A senior player knocked on Heckingbottom’s office door to tell the manager that the squad’s morale was on the floor. Four of United’s fit players that day had spent the previous season either on loan at Derby County in League One, Barrow in League Two, Bradford Park Avenue of the Northern Premier League Premier Division, or with the club’s under-21s.
After everything the players and staff had worked so hard to achieve the previous season — against a backdrop of unpaid bills, transfer embargoes, failed takeovers and administration fears — how could their top-flight return already have been so fatally undermined?
Sheffield United were arguably the most ill-prepared team in Premier League history. In Monday night’s humiliating 6-0 defeat by Arsenal — five down within 39 minutes, the first side in English football to lose three consecutive home league games by at least a five-goal margin — the result of such stark mismanagement was clear for all to see.

Now, the questions being posed involve Monday’s performance being the worst display, perhaps even by the worst team, in Premier League history. Chris Wilder, who replaced Heckingbottom as manager in December, said recent results have left his players “broken and damaged”, but in truth many of their bruises were self-inflicted.
It would be easy to point fingers at Wilder, whose return to the club tugged heart-strings but after a brief fillip is already threatening to turn sour; or Heckingbottom, who himself oversaw defeats of 8-0 by Newcastle United and 5-0 by Arsenal; or the players, whose first-half performance against Arsenal is widely agreed to have been one of the most abject in living memory.
The culpability for Sheffield United’s miserable state, however, ultimately lies with Prince Abdullah, the club’s Saudi owner, whose meagre financial backing and rank incompetence makes it an enduring mystery that he presided over promotions from the Championship twice in four years. Both of those ascents, though, owed everything to stellar work by Wilder and Heckingbottom, and were achieved in spite, not because, of Abdullah’s stewardship.

It is hard to recall a promoted club beginning a campaign with a team so clearly diminished from the last. Berge and Ndiaye were in the final years of their contracts and, after failing to agree new deals, the club chose to sell them for a combined total of about £32 million, on the eve of a campaign that would generate six times that sum if they survived for only one season.
Ndiaye, Berge and the on-loan Manchester City duo Tommy Doyle and James McAtee (who returned on deadline day), accounted for four of United’s top-five chance creators last season, as well as 45 per cent of their league goals. The decision to release Billy Sharp, club captain and boyhood United fan, was taken out of Heckingbottom’s hands and took no consideration of the then 37-year-old’s influence in a changing room the manager described as “fragile” after those key departures.
When replacements finally did arrive, the season was already under way and, of the ten arrivals — three of whom joined on loan, the rest for a collective £56 million — only Cameron Archer, Gustavo Hamer and McAtee were anywhere near the required standard.

Thoughts are already turning to next season and the respite of a return to the second tier. Abdullah’s attempts to sell the club have so far been in vain. A deal with the Nigerian businessman Dozy Mmobuosi collapsed last year and Mmobuosi has since been accused of fraud by the US Securities and Exchange Commission. The previous suitor, Henry Mauriss, is now serving time in a California jail for wire fraud.
No one is disputing how hard it is to bridge the gulf from Championship to Premier League, but Sheffield United never stood a chance. The loss of defenders John Egan and Chris Basham to season-ending injuries in the space of a week in September and October did not help.
There can be no accounting for the wild tackle which led to Mason Holgate’s 13th-minute red card in the 5-0 defeat by Brighton & Hove Albion last month, a week after a morale-boosting victory away to Luton Town. Jack Robinson and Vinícius Souza’s fracas ten days ago was perhaps evidence of tensions coming to the boil. But the tensions were there there from the start. How many kicks can a group of players take?

The sight of fans walking out on their struggling team long before the final whistle is a modern phenomenon. It was not the done thing to get up and walk out when I was a player, but I still know how the rejected Sheffield United and West Ham United players will have been feeling as they suffered their home hammerings by Arsenal.
In my day, that rejection of an under-performing side came in the form of stadiums that were three-quarters empty from kick-off — Premier League arenas are generally sold out nowadays — and I can tell you it was really weird. Instead of hearing a mass of cheering or jeering you could pick out individual shouts, which, given the way the team had been playing, you would rather not have heard. You have to try to shut out those isolated voices, but it’s not easy.
I remember a midweek home match I played with Chelsea against Southampton in 1991-92, the last season of the old First Division. Stamford Bridge was eerie and negative, full of echoes. The chairman Ken Bates walked into the dressing room afterwards in a furious mood and blamed us for the pitiful attendance. “You lot only sold 7,200 tickets tonight and hundreds of those were freebies,” he said.
Another time I played against Newcastle United at St James’ Park with Millwall in 1989 after the home side had already been doomed to relegation. Only 14,000 turned up at what was normally such a passionate ground, and there were demonstrations. It meant that all the pressure was on our opponents, so we could play with freedom, as Arsenal did at Bramall Lane and the London Stadium.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s even worse when the stadium is full and all your own fans are hurling abuse at you, but apathy is still unpleasant to face. It’s horrible playing in that atmosphere. You know that your supporters have either chosen to miss the action or are sitting in their seats because they can’t think of anything better to do.
I’ve always been fascinated by the interaction between players and fans, and how the latter can exert such an effect on the team they support. The opposite to Sheffield United’s predicament can be seen at the moment with Arsenal and Liverpool, who are riding a wave of optimism and exuberance created by their fans.

Heard about the Sander Berge rumour but dismissed it as bull**** as it was widely reported at the time - FFS we were apparently in for him at that stage' most papers had him heading out of the door and if Paul H wasn't aware the more fool him FFS

[dom9]

I've just stuck on United v Everton.

My goodness. Two appalling teams.

[DerKrampus]

It's been 8 minutes and I can say with some certainty that we'd have a ****ing field day against both teams.

[DerKrampus]

Hahaha Everton 1-0 down - Bruno pelanty.

[DerKrampus]

Second pelanty to Utd - Everton 2-0 down now.

[S-RED]

No idea how the score is 2-0 & whilst amusing it's equally irritating ����

[Sus]

Exactly! I’m a bit annoyed actually, would like a draw to help ensure United don’t sneak 5th place

Everton have been the better team by some distance, United are so ****

[Kenneth]

In the few times I’ve watched Everton this season they have played reasonably well, but rarely have they looked like scoring a goal. Could play this all day and they still wouldn’t create a good chance.