S-Clarke

I don't think there are any real differences finishing 4th or 3rd to be honest. Makes no odds. Both positions still get the second leg at home, which is the only real advantage you get from the 5-6 positions. I don't buy the notion that teams in 5-6 are weaker, they'll be just as hard as the team in 4th or 3rd. Playoffs are a lottery, form, points you've accumulated and where you finished in the league table goes out of the window. The best advantage is the 2nd playoff leg at home, and 4th or 3rd gets us that. I still would like to finish 3rd as it means we've got momentum, but finishing 3rd won't give us any 'tie' advantage.

Absolutely, everyone involved should be.

There comes a point where professionalism comes into play though, you just have to forget playing any philosophy and just shut the game down. Make it bitty, make it ugly - exactly what Sheff U have done in this second half. The enormous gulf is still there, but they've just dug in a bit. 10 men or not, we just let Leicester and Utd do exactly what they wanted for 90mins and the players should be ashamed of themselves for the rest of their careers, certainly the ones who were part of two.

Subs have killed the game, shame. Shows how crazy a 9-0 is, let a lone two of them. We were special kinds of shite in those two games.

0-6.

Any team who starts with McBernie up top is pretty much pub level.

I think he was linked after we lost Koeman, but he wanted bigger/better and we ended up with Puel. He has been a manager of better pedigree than us though tbf, did a good job at Chelsea.

Tbf they're lucky he isn't playing, it would probably already be 10-0.

It's pretty obvious that it's how we're trying to fit Stephens into the side, I don't feel particularly comfortable with that if I'm honest. We've got good enough attackers without him getting in the way. We tried it at home to Millwall, he played everywhere, I think it confused the hell out of us. It's not as if he's playing particularly bad, he's not, it's just an odd way to deploy him when we have good enough attackers to do the same role.

This season has been a total waste of Sheffield United's time, they've not even given it a go. They sold their best players from last year before a ball was kicked, really odd set up there. I don't think they'll be any sort of threat next year, it's hard to recover from a season as bad as this and bounce again. They don't even have any good players for Championship level as their best players from last year were sold.

I'm so glad we were never daft enough to pick AMN up on a free. he really is an appalling footballer who will drift into mediocrity now. Wouldn't even be any good at Champ level.

In most seasons you can get away with one blip, two blips will be pushing it and make it pretty hard - but dooable. Two blips in this freak of a season, with the point tallies the teams are getting, is pretty much game over. I still hold a tiny bit of hope in the possible, given that we play all 3 in the mix with us, but it looks an incredibly tall order now. We basically need to win every game. I think we're on for high end 80's, low 90 point wise - which in most seasons will probably squeeze you second, but this season will likely be 4th. The top 2 this year will be hitting 100+ points easily.

I don't think you'd ever see anything other than positive, even if he kicked the ball into our net I'm sure you'd find a way to say it wasn't his fault. Anyone with an ounce of football experience will tell you that he needed to drop off, and someone with awareness would have known to do that. Either a lack of communication, a lack of awareness, or a mixture of both - both Bednarek and Manning were at fault in varying degrees there, it was nonsense from both of them. Even Martin agrees as he described both of them as nonsense in that moment.

I've watched it back a few times, my initial thought is still the same. He was caught in no mans land, he didn't need to be on Bednarek's arse like he was. He needed to have awareness to drop back so we were more protected against the counter. One flick or one poor header and you've taken out two defenders, rather than 1 and it's curtains - and that's what happened. It's dreadful positional awareness from him, so bad.

He played ok yesterday? Held the ball up well, brought others into play - was key in the equalising goal with his quick pass out wide. Thought he was a bit unlucky with a couple of his efforts as well, all in all it was a good number 9 performance.

This hasn't been talked about enough imo - we were utterly relentless in how we moved through the final thirds, chance after chance - didn't we hit the post 3 times? All coming from drawing the press by playing at the back, and then bang, bang, bang - through on goal. It was a clear demonstration of how this high risk philosophy can benefit hugely in terms of chance creation. Honestly Brum couldn't have complained had we won that 4 or 5 nill yesterday, would have been an absolute travesty had we not won that one. We were levels above, just kept getting caught by individual moments.

We seemingly thought he was worth that, as he's our current record signing at £23.5m. And I imagine we'd be looking to recoup close to that when we sell him in the summer.

Not every human being is the same, some people are really sensitive and are affected by things like that. The thing is he didn't even need to go onto twitter to specifically look for that comment, it had been retweeted and just ended up on his normal feed I believe. Not everyone is made of steel and that's why those nut jobs on twitter get a massive kick out of it.

Leeds won 9 on the bounce, went to Huddersfield and drew. Nothing is guaranteed in the run in, especially with the relegation battle going up to 12th place. Every game has something on it.

Exactly, silly season is upon us now.

It will need to be tweaked quite significantly should we go up though, you can't play that way in the PL - as the better quality will always score more than any quality you have.

He got some horrific stuff sent his way in mid week, as someone mentioned the lowest point was someone wishing he had cancer. Absolutely twitter is full of non-people, just bots and lunatics who should be locked up, but it doesn't mean shit like that doesn't effect you in some way. You'd have to be inhuman to not let it. You can also use it as a bit of a galvanizing thing to throw back in peoples faces, which he did yesterday. Let's not forget that Martin is an extremely emotional person, so it won't take much to get to him.

I think they're better than that to be fair, their wide man (Miller) is a real threat. Usually plays from the left so I'd certainly throw KWP back for this, or at the very least Bree. Obviously that means we have to keep Manning at LB though.

I think all 3 relegated teams have been left in similar positions with their squads - all 3 have utterly ridiculous levels of talent for this level. I don't think any of us are doing anything magical, just doing what should be expected. Leeds were gutted quite a bit. Of their first team PL squad from last year they lost Koch, Rodrigo, Adams, Aaronson, Harrison, Sinistera, Kristensen, Roca, Wober - quite a bit to be fair, all of those went on either nominal fees or loans. Leicester lost Maddison, Barnes, Castange, Kristiansen, Tielemans, Soyunchu, Armartey, Perez, Evans, Mendy, Soumare - all first team PL players last year. We lost Lavia, Livramento, JWP, Salisu, Moussa, ABK, DCC, Diallo, Perraud, Ely - who were part of our PL squad last year. I'd say we didn't lose half as many critical players as the other two, the first 3 were our key ones. We managed to retain KWP, Bednarek, Adams, Stu Armstrong, Aribo - and then added THB, Downes, Fraser, Brooks down the spine of the team whilst re-integrating the likes of Adam Armstrong and Will Smallbone into this level. Our loans were PL level loans, not Championship level loans. My feeling is that all 3 of us have ridiculous squads for this level, both financially and the level of quality available. All 3 are pretty much performing as they should be in terms of the points tallies, Ipswich are the big anomaly stuck there in the middle. Just for comparision, we are currently 1 point better off from our last promotion effort from this league - but with a -10 worst GD (That September onslaught still lingers)

I think the run in will be quite interesting, a lot of people have lots of games as bankers for our rivals - but it's the run in, there is almost half of the league in a relegation battle - there are simply no easy games for any team, apart from if you've got Rotherham! No one had Leeds dropping points against Huddersfield, nor did they have QPR beating Leicester. It's silly season now, nothing goes by the form book or league position.