Yes, gets boring every year with same teams up and down. Premiership parachute money just too much which makes it very difficult for any other teams to compete

Not sure Burnley will be top 6 come the end of the season. Don't think they are consistent enough. Sheff Utd, Norwich and Watford will be top 6 though. Norwich will walk the league now after their rocky start.

You are boring, how old are you?

As long as we don't have a long losing streak or nailed in the bottom 3 them I don't think we'll sack Ince and think we'd be silly to do so.

Ince out and about at the Reading Festival over the weekend - wasn't a fan of the Arctic Monkeys

Never likely to get anything out of the game tonight, was simply one game too far for us
Don’t think Ince got his tactics right though, said before the game that you have to control their midfield, there aren’t many better midfielders in the Championship than Norwood when you let him dictate the play and that’s exactly what we did today. It’s said almost every time we lost to them but what a waste of a quality player he was, totally misused him here
Also think Joao ahead of Long was a mistake as it was essential to really press up from the front which Long does a better job of doing but ultimately not sure how much of an actual difference that would have made

Yes, gets boring every year with same teams up and down. Premiership parachute money just too much which makes it very difficult for any other teams to compete

Not sure Burnley will be top 6 come the end of the season. Don't think they are consistent enough. Sheff Utd, Norwich and Watford will be top 6 though. Norwich will walk the league now after their rocky start.

And then they’ll struggle in the Prem next year, same pattern between championship and Premier League every year. Even teams that do well initially seem to come back down after 2 or 3 years. Occasional exception as there is to every rule.

Ridiculous from Dann
Morrison should have been released as well though. Not up to this level now

Those three had shades of the early run in Clowno's first season. Riding our luck, keeping cleansheets we couldn't maintain longer term.

I get the comparison, I don't think it's quite the same though. We were absolutely under the cosh with Pauno and always looked a whisker away from defeat. Boro threw a bit at us but Millwall and Cardiff, from recent memory, didn't actually have a great deal of clear cut chances against us. Under Pauno we were just one good finish from the opposition away from crumbling whereas our previous 3 wins, we never really looked in "that" much danger of getting beat.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?

I get the comparison, I don't think it's quite the same though. We were absolutely under the cosh with Pauno and always looked a whisker away from defeat. Boro threw a bit at us but Millwall and Cardiff, from recent memory, didn't actually have a great deal of clear cut chances against us. Under Pauno we were just one good finish from the opposition away from crumbling whereas our previous 3 wins, we never really looked in "that" much danger of getting beat.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?
Doesn’t matter. That level of pressure will regularly lead to goals in the long term, and that little possession will struggle to score goals regularly in the long term.
Did Lumley have many saves to make against Sheffield? He made 3 total, at least one if not more were just routine.

This, was optimistic on the build up of a good battle. Saw the team sheet and in my mind didn't make sense. But ultimately wouldn't have made a huge difference who we started.

We were chasing shadows from the off. A lot of players purely out shone by a very good and a very organised Sheff utd team. Best team we have played in a long time.

We looked exactly how Blackburn looked versus us.

36 year old ponderous defender with known fitness issues in not being able to get fit shocker.
Morro was at worst mixed last season. Not a regular by any stretch these days, but would have been a useful squad option.

It is what it is.
We just didn't get going and gave them far too much respect. As the first half went on, the pressing kicked in a little bit and produced a couple of half chances which we just didn't look like capitalising on.
The second killed us and then it was realistically damage limitation.
We simply aren't competing with the likes of Sheffield United this year, so any points we get from these games would be an absolute bonus.
Shows we need at least a couple of more bodies in who can allow us to freshen up a little. Sheffield were able to make a couple of changes from the game at Luton and still look strong - we are pretty much having to play the same side each week. No wonder the energy levels looked different.

Whilst we were totally outclassed first half, we went in at the break growing into the game still firmly in it and knowing we could carve out chances.
That early goal second half, with Fornah beaten at a defensive set piece in about his first involvement in the game killed it though.
If we are alert at the start of that half and can hold out for 10 minutes or so, it's easily a different game we could snatch an undeserved point from.
Once we let Sheff get their dander up again, we were buried.
Ince got it wrong, McIntyre can't manage a midfield slot in that sort of game and we disrupted our well balanced midfield for him. Loum wasn't prepared for that level of quality in the Championship, and Hendrick just isn't really up to that level of quality.
Once again we started too deep and got punished. Our best phases were when we pushed higher to press. Lots of niggly fouls before they got in our half to disrupt them and break their rhythm was the way to go. Too often they just ran past our players and too often they were doing it too deep in our half to risk giving away freekicks.
We worked hard, gave it a go and got some chances, sadly we snatched at them.
Better team won and did a number on us. We won't play many teams that good at this level.

Can't argue with any of that. Felt we were starting to get a toehold toward the end of the half and having got lucky by only being 1 down, there were signs that if we could stay tight, we would create something or get a chance from a set play. But 90 seconds after half-time, done - move on, focus on Stoke and hopefully have another couple of bodies available for that as well.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?
Doesn’t matter. That level of pressure will regularly lead to goals in the long term, and that little possession will struggle to score goals regularly in the long term.
Did Lumley have many saves to make against Sheffield? He made 3 total, at least one if not more were just routine.

That's a fair point about possession, generally the teams that have more of the ball win more games than those that don't, obviously not the case in all scenario's though. But, as Stam proved, just "having the ball" can be seen as important because it means the opposition doesn't have it and therefore can't score. When we used to have 80% of the ball under Stam, that's essentially saying to the opposition that they have about 12-15 minutes in possession to score a goal, whereas we have 45+ minutes to score a goal (accounting for about a third of the game is taken up by set pieces, which we'd have the lions share of as we used to have most of the ball).
I think the way we play, possession we have etc is just a case of where we are as a team and a club. A bottom of the table second tier side, looking to be tough to play against, difficult to beat and scrapping for as many wins and points as we can get. If we can have sort of 22 points by game 15, I'll be pleased.

I think Dann is just overall a better player/defender than Morrison, but obviously doesn't mean jack all when you can't get him in the squad, let alone on the field.

I was at the game and this a very good summary.
I travelled back to Chesterfield with a couple of Sheffield Utd fans who thought we were the worst team they’d seen at Bramall Lane for ages. I reminded them about last April and the fact that we’re down to our bare bones. It was all good banter and tbf although they were aware of our predicament they hadn’t realised how bad things had been.

Well that`s two stinkers out of the way, both in Yorkshire, we got a reaction last time when the gaffer kicked arse, let`s hope he can work the magic again.

HT FT --------------- Tipster

0-1 1-2 ------------ Franconian Royal

________________________________________________________________________
==========================================================

0-0 0-0 ------------ Snowball
1-0 1-1 ------------ Royal Forester

0-1 1-1 ------------ morganb

0-1 1-1 ------------ Royal Jimmy
=======================================================
0-1 2-1 ------------ Horsham Royal

1-0 2-1 ------------ Regular John
X-X 3-0 ------------ Jackson Corner

1-1 3-1 ------------ MoonPig
_____________________________________________________________________________

X-X 3-0 ------------ Jackson Corner

22 ------------ Regular John

21 ------------ Royal Forester

20 ------------ Mid Sussex Royal

17 ------------ Horsham Royal

16 ------------ MoonPig

15 ------------ Snowball

15 ------------ morganb

15 ------------ Royal Jimmy

12 ------------ Franconian Royal

02 ------------ Jackson Corner

OVERALL
After Sheffield United 4-0 Reading
126 + 15 = 141 Snowball
113 + 21 = 134 Royal Forester -------------(Edit)

108 + 22 = 130 Regular John

113 + 17 = 130 Horsham Royal
113 + 12 = 125 Franconian Royal

109 + 15 = 124 MorganB

104 + 15 = 119 Royal Jimmy
070 + 20 = 090 Mid Sussex Royal
062 + 00 = 062 Caversham Royal

042 + 16 = 058 MoonPig
015 + 00 = 015 Royalp-we

012 + 00 = 012 South Downs Royal
000 + 02 = 002 Jackson Corner

Fair play to Sheffield they thoroughly deserved that. Our boys did try to be fair but clearly utterly shattered and just not able to compete with Sheffield.
We move on.

If we look at the wider picture, 3 points out of 6 away at two tough venues is fine.

We do have to keep the SCL stadium a fortress in the months ahead and if so the mid-table target would be achieved.
The shame is that our best player (on his day) is an enigma which doesn't really work in a team of hard-working limited triers-I wouldn't be surprised to see him leave tomorrow although his injury record might stop WBA or anybody else coming in for him.

Was he trying not to get injured last night?

I'd be pretty surprised to see him leave now considering our stance over the summer with him and what we can and can't do with any incoming fee for him.
I wouldn't read too much into last night, returning from injury and Ince himself said that he played more minutes against Blackburn than he would have liked so it might have taken it's toll a bit over the last few games. Hopefully we can get this "mystery" striker in to take a bit of pressure off Joao as well and we can get Long involved as well.

I think a player has to retire from the game in order to be able to claim on insurance. Pretty sure you can’t insure (at least for any kind of sensible premium) for temporary injury.

Even insurance against career ending injury is so expensive (given the large number of claims and the likely size of those claims) that I believe many clubs don’t take it out and neither do individual players.

I think there was a discussion about this on the Price of Football podcast ages ago and they did the sums on cost of premiums vs self insuring by clubs.

Insurance pays out to a club on a injury suffered on international duty so not beyond the realms of impossibility there could be policies available with payouts if a star left back got a broken leg or something.

Different insurance though. That is a country FA having to cover the players they borrow from their employers. You can obviously insure anything if you pay a high enough premium

Baba confirmed. Would imagine he goes straight into the team on Sunday.
So likely just a midfielder and possibly a striker to come in from the free agent pool.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?
Doesn’t matter. That level of pressure will regularly lead to goals in the long term, and that little possession will struggle to score goals regularly in the long term.
Did Lumley have many saves to make against Sheffield? He made 3 total, at least one if not more were just routine.

Yeah but he conceded 4 (theoretically all saves to make)
Not having a save but conceding 4 in one game is a lot different to 1 save in 3 matches where we don’t concede
Waffly way of saying the defensive unit has been pretty strong and weren’t really under significant pressure against the 3 teams we beat for a considerable amount of time. Boro maybe a bit more than the other 2 but still didn’t look like conceding particularly

I get the comparison, I don't think it's quite the same though. We were absolutely under the cosh with Pauno and always looked a whisker away from defeat. Boro threw a bit at us but Millwall and Cardiff, from recent memory, didn't actually have a great deal of clear cut chances against us. Under Pauno we were just one good finish from the opposition away from crumbling whereas our previous 3 wins, we never really looked in "that" much danger of getting beat.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?

Just on this, the Lumley save v Blackburn was 1-0 at the time and was as important as any goal scored that night, imo.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?

Just on this, the Lumley save v Blackburn was 1-0 at the time and was as important as any goal scored that night, imo.

Yes you are quite correct. My old age kicking in