Another thing the Vincent Tan era has seen is the arrival of the “meaningless” FA Cup tie. The last fourteen years have seen a variety of Third Round FA Cup ties that did not live long in the memory as a variety of City shadow sides, more often than not, made an early exit from the competition.
Tonight’s tie at Sheffield United was probably the first match City had played on a Thursday with a 7 o clock kick off in their history and won’t live long in the memory either, but at least the 150 or so hardy souls who travelled up to Yorkshire in freezing conditions got to see their team win 1-0. This time it was the Blades fans that had the deflating feeling of wondering what they were doing watching their team play so listlessly as the unforced errors mounted up.
It’s unusual for City to win an FA Cup game these days, but with three unbeaten and encouraging performances behind them going into the match, it continues a sense of momentum being built. Three of these matches have been played away from home against teams that were in the top six of the Championship when we played them and that can only add to confidence levels within the squad for the league battles to come.
Of course, it was nothing near the Sheffield team that beat City pretty comfortably on their own pitch in the last match before Christmas. Manager Chris Wilder made seven changes from the side that won at Watford on the weekend and with many regular selections suffering with injuries, there was a smattering of youngsters involved.
In saying that, it was seven changes from the team which drew at Middlesbrough as well for City as only Jesper Daland, Cian Ashford, Rubin Colwill and Ollie Tanner remained. Omer Riza gave Ethan Horvarth a rare start in goal, Ronan Kpakio was at right wing back, with Tanner on the left, Joel Bagan and Will Fish were in a back three, with Perry Ng accompanying Joe Ralls, who was making his 400th appearance for the club, in midfield and Kion Etete was in senior team action for the first time this season up front.
Etete only played the first forty five minutes, which I assume was always the plan, rather than down to more injury problems, and featured prominently in the opening stages as City took the initiative.
The former Spurs man did pretty well in general, but will probably be disappointed not to have found the net from at least one of two presentable chances in the opening six minutes. For the first, he got his head to a fine, early cross by Colwill, but goalkeeper Adam Davies got down to turn the ball aside. Within a couple of minutes, Ashford did brilliantly to flick past Jamal Baptiste and race clear in the inside right channel. Just like he did at Watford for the winning goal, Ashford had the presence of mind to play what should have been the perfect pass for another assist only for Colwill to take it away from the better placed Etete with a heavy first touch. From making a mess of things, Colwill then did well to tee up Etete with a clever back heel, but when the shot finally came in, it flew a couple of yards high and wide.
That second chance especially should have been scored by one of the two players involved and as the home side began to push forward more, you wondered if City’s best oportunities had come and gone already.
However, that was to reckon without Ashford who came up with a decisive goal that was all his own work as he robbed Blades captain Rhys Norrington-Davies, then had the pace to keep far enough ahead of the Welsh international and take the ball into the penalty area before calmly side footing past the advancing Davies.
I may be wrong here, but I think this was the first goal of this type that we’ve scored all season (Callum Robinson’s goal at Hull was similar, but he didn’t need to be that quick as he was played into plenty of space). By that I mean one of our players was able to get clear of the last man and once in behind the defence he took the ball on to score – we’ve not had the sort of players to do that until now.
To be honest, Sheffield were so out of sorts going forward that, despite getting more careless in the second half with their passing, City held on to their lead with few alarms until the game was almost over.
Horvarth showed the usual limitations with his kicking, but was safe and assured in his handling when tested by Louie Marsh, Rhian Brewster and Ryan One and with all three starting centrebacks doing a steady job (plus Tom Davies, who slotted in there as part of a reshuffle caused by an injury to Kpakio which forced him off at half time as Ng switched to wing back and Bagan moved into midfield).
Etete’s replacement was Irish forward Luke Pearce who returned from his loan spell at Sligo Rovers last month. It was a first look at the ex Southampton player for most City fans, myself included, and he showed up well despite not getting a lot of quality service in a scrappy second half in which both teams’ passing got more slipshod.
City were now playing more on the break, but the chances were still there for them as Bagan and Colwill worked a good one two only for the former to put his left foot shot well over. Tanner then chest controlled an Ng cross really well before sending his shot a couple of yards over, Ashford who, as Nathan Blake said in commentary, seems to always make the right decisions, forced Davies into another diving save and then Ralls’ precise effort after being well set up by Pearce hit the side netting.
Before City’s win was confirmed though, the home team came up with what was by some distance their best effort of the night as Harrison Burrows beat a couple of players and then shot against an upright from twenty yards with Horvarth well beaten.
So, one hundred years after a single goal, this time for Sheffield, separated these two teams in the FA Cup Final, City gained a win to match the 3-1 triumph on the same ground in the Third Round back in 1972. We were struggling in the second tier then as well, but Sheffield were in the top flight due to that notorious 5-1 win over us some nine months earlier – that giant killing is another game which doesn’t tend to get remembered much among older fans as attention focuses on that earlier hammering we took. However, with a first clean sheet since our draw at West Brom almost three months ago to celebrate, we can now focus on who we’ll get next for a few days and our win means that the home league game with Hull scheduled for February 8 will have to be rearranged.
One last thing, with many of the regular under 21 team on duty tonight, it was a much more inexperienced side than normal which travelled to Ipswich yesterday and from the highlights I saw, it was something of a case of men against boys as a much bigger home side won by 5-1 to suggest that the likely loaning out of some of our young professionals will see us having a less successful second half to the season than we did first. The only good news was that there was another good finish by Mannie Barton to get us back to 2-1 going into the second half, but this was an afternoon when we were well beaten by a better team.
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Thanks, Paul.
6,127 at the game, yet Everton get a full house of 39,000. I am trying to work out the reason.
Could supporters of the Blades be contaminated by the arrogance of their manager? It still stuns me that Wilder could show such a staggering lack of self-awareness a year ago as to make this appalling ‘show respect to a Premier League manager’ remark… https://tinyurl.com/bdfmuycv
But in truth I had taken against him a good while earlier because I was starting to see this bloke was not the ‘man of the people’ he had projected himself as being.
I had so been taken in by him, that when I saw him on Football Focus tell Dan Walker that just like Dan, he also frequented the Two Steps Fish & Chip shop in Sharrow Vale Road in Sheffield… and they both agreed it was unbeatable, and the best such establishment in the city… I was determined to check it out.
For also, that was fighting talk to a chap like me living in Grimsby, the town so synonymous with the best haddock, that you cannot buy cod in 95% of the myriad f&c takeaways in Grimsby and Cleethorpes. We regard cod as a Hull fish… historically the fishing fleet of Hull fished for cod, and the Grimsby fleet fished for haddock… to such an extent in Grimsby’s case that the port holds the British record for the biggest landing of fish in history.
And so about 3 years ago during a gap between lockdowns, I drove across to Sheffield just to check out Two Steps… and had a good conversation with the very personable owner (Laggy) and his wife…
https://tinyurl.com/58eysuhx
And consume his haddock which interestingly was cheaper than his cod*, and also try his mushy pea fritter… something not peculiar to Sheffield residents, but an exotic creation to Grimbarians.
Had I not thought Wilder a ‘man of the people’ I would not have embarked on the journey, but somehow he convinced me that Two Steps was worthy of a pilgrimage for a trencherman like me. (In fairness, it is a pretty good f&c shop and worth the visit… though I could find half a dozen within 4 miles of me that are easily its equal.)
But now? If Chris Wilder endorsed my local butcher, I would immediately become a vegan.
[Right Dai, breathe normally. That is Mr Wilder out of your system. Such things are better out than in.]
Football.
Delighted we beat his team last night. Our keeper gave me some palpitations with his occasional madcap kamikaze playing out from the back… then fortunately deciding on a sensible long accurate goal kick… only to find that task also quite beyond him. (Omer should get Jak to give him lessons in landing the ball on a sixpence.)
Will someone also teach Rubin how to a head a football… à la John Charles giving the 16 year old Tosh weekly heading lessons that were to pay off in ways he could never have imagined.
* https://tinyurl.com/cny5kmj4
TTFN,
Dai.
PS to my comments.
Re the third link (https://tinyurl.com/yrhb89sz) check out the YouTube ‘top comments’ to the right of the screen. The third one down is from a chap called Vin Adamswood… which is an anagram for David Woosnam.
I mostly agree with all you say Paul.
One part I wouldn’t agree with though is your description of Sheff Utd comfortably beating us just before Xmas. Until Kieffer’s quality strike in that game to open the scoring, I thought we competed very well against a top placed team who’d won 8 and drawn 2 of their previous 10 games. Despite Sheff Utd having the majority of possession, I thought we were going to contain them. Admittedly after the first goal, Sheff Utd concentrated more on keeping the ball, which they did pretty well, and I feared we’d likely not get a goal back.
Thanks Dai for an interesting Fish and Chips read – a subject , too, close to my heart! We’re old enough to remember Chris Wilder as a player – not that I have many memories of him, I just recall him as a lower level, no nonsense, journeyman defender and for some time that was what he looked like being as a manager. I can remember reading a book about twenty years ago about “the modern game” and there was a section on some young, up and coming, manager who the writer thought had a very good relationship with the media because he was so open and forthcoming with them. I’ve long since forgotten who the manager in question was, but I’m pretty sure he didn’t do as well as the writer thought he would.
I may not remember who the chapter was about, but the funny thing is I can recall this person being contrasted very favourably with Chris Wilder, who was described as “very dour” and unapproachable. I think Wilder was manager of Oxford at the time and I paid little attention to him until his Sheffield United team came to Cardiff early in the 17/18 promotion campaign and they turned out to be one of the best visiting sides of that season.
Wilder definitely did a very good job in his early years at Sheffield United first time around and, as his team climbed into the Premier League and his appearances in front of a national, as opposed to local, media grew, I think he tried to change his public persona, hence what you call his “man of the people” act.
Since his career has taken a downturn, I think he’s become more like his usual self again and, although I think Scott Parker is another boring manager who has proven himself capable of getting teams promoted to the top flight, but then looks very limited when he gets there, I hope it’s Burnley and Sunderland who go up automatically (I could never wish success on Leeds). We played Sheffield United’s first team just before Christmas and two fine finishes by Kieffer Moore apart, i was not very impressed by Mr Wilder’s team – they were shockingly bad last time they were in the Premier League and I’d expect them to do not much better if they were there again next season.
It was a little surprising to see us playing out from the back on Thursday because it was beginning to look as if the arrival of Richard Shaw had brought about an end to the practice. Interestingly, when Joel Bagan replaced Perry Ng in midfield, the playing out from the back virtually disappeared in the second half – I thought Bagan was an improvement on Ng in the middle of the park as well.
i’m guessing that Rubin Colwill is something like two inches taller than Toshack and probably more than that than Charles, but I don’t see him being a “natural’ header of the ball like the other two were. Rubin’s actually surprised me from time to time in the last two games by winning the occasional header against his marker, but that miss against Middlesbrough demonstrates his shortcomings when the ball is in the air – Charles or Toshack would have buried that chance without a second thought.
I think my use of the word “comfortably” was more to do with our limitations in that we barely ever looked like scoring Blue Bayou. As I say in my reply to Dai, I wasn’t overly impressed by Sheffield United in our first meeting with them. I thought we were better organised than normal that day and was just beginning to think we could get s 0-0 when Moore scored his first goal – I suppose a better way of putting what I thought about the game would have been to say we never looked like equalising once we fell behind.
I have been going on about Colwill’s aerial limitations for some while as readers to your column will know and it really does puzzle me why our coaching staff have failed to address the problem. Far, far too often he jumps with his back to the ball and by so doing is never “attacking” the ball. Perhaps he doesn’t want to damage his expensive “hair do”!
And on Thursday, when he had a golden effort to shoot, he opted not to. Someone needs to have a serious chat with the young man.
Finally, thank goodness for Ashford. Surely he must now become one of the first names on the team sheet.
Nice to hear from you again Brian, I’ve been on Rubin’s side for years, but I’ve found watching him in recent months very frustrating. I think he is a lot less confident in his finishing than he was when he first came into the team and I’m not sure that he’ll ever be that good in the air, but what I noticed on Thursday was that his first touch was unusually slipshod. It’s a testimony to his natural ability that he often managed to retain possession despite the ball getting away from him at first, but I’d rate him as equally culpable with Etete (who had the excuse of it being within the opening five minutes of his first senior team game of the season after a long time out injured) of butchering that great chance created by Ashford in the opening minutes. Colwill took another poor first touch on a ball that I don’t think was meant for him and. although his backheel presented Etete with what should have been a goal, the whole thing became a mess which encapsulated why we score so few goals from open play.
It’s early days yet with Ashford, but, from the moment he came on at Oxford on Boxing Day, he’s been decisive with his decision making and looked like it was all coming pretty easily ro him – this is in contrast to the Colwill of recent weeks who is beginning to make things that he should be doing without thinking look something of an effort. I think it might be time for someone to take him to one side and tell him to stop trying so hard and relax a little.