Dirty Sheffield United?

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FMBlade1

FMBlade1

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Tactical fouls - are Man City unfairly maligned?

Manchester City are regularly accused of being tactical foulers - is it fair and are any other teams at it?
www.bbc.co.uk www.bbc.co.uk

'One aspect to keep an eye on, though: Manchester City averaged 8.63 fouls a game last term, but with 27 fouls conceded after two games this season (only Sheffield United have more), that average is currently 13.5 per game, compared to Liverpool's 7.5. '

Very early days of course, but I'm quite surprised by that as I didn't realize anything abnormal from our first two games. It's a tag thrown at us a lot because of lazy punditry and opposition fans presuming Wilder's teams are similar to Warnock. Is there any modicum of truth in it though?

If we look at the Championship Fair play table from last year we don't do too badly finishing in the top half: https://www.transfermarkt.co.uk/championship/fairnesstabelle/wettbewerb/GB2/plus/?saison_id=2018

However if you just look at fouls we committed 224 across the season, only Leeds and Derby had more (both clubs ironically media darlings and labelled connoisseurs of the beautiful game)

The upside to that is our 'fouls to cards' is pretty good, showing that the fouls we commit aren't dangerous or particularly 'dirty'.

Are the fouls we commit particularly tactical or of a certain nature? I wouldn't say we are a dirty team, but the foul stats would indicate that it could be fair to describe us as more 'niggly' than most, whilst at the same time when we're in possession playing champagne football.

As I said I haven't noticed any particular trends so interested in others think
 

No there is a simple answer, Premiership refs. Physical contact of any type is not allowed. Any attempt to disrupt players hairstyles is frowned upon. Teams playing against us currently have a low foul count as we have not developed the dying swan routine favoured by premiership golden boys.

Apparently on Saturday the EPL are so concerned about our inability to fall down without physical contact they have arranged for a master class by one of the top exponents of this developing art. Step forward James Maddison.
 
I think we're on a bit of a learning curve this season.

Tackles that wouldn't be any sort of fouls will become so now when the PL Superstars fall to the floor if anyone farts in their general direction.

The number of fouls extracted by Fraser on day 1 was a lesson in acrobatics that we will do well to learn, and learn quickly.
 
We’ve only given so many fouls away due to the theatrics of the pampered fuckers in this league. The refs are as soft as shit and fall for everything.

Benteke is a big feller, well the big, daft, crap piece of string bean couldn’t stay on his feet and fell down every time someone burped near him, him and the ref were pathetic on Sunday.

.....and don’t get me started on that cunt Fraser. 🤬

We’re not dirty but that might change when Mo Besic gets a runout. 🙈🤣
 
2 games in and Wilder has already alluded to the fact that we're going to have to become more "streetwise".

Perhaps it a generational thing, but I'm already finding the frequent sight of athletic and physically imposing men hurling themselves to the floor because they've received that 'touch' which means 'they're entitled to go down', utterly embarrassing. What sort of bubble do these overpaid primadonnas live in, such that they don't seem to be in any way self-conscious about how laughably pathetic they look when they are falling about? Grown men, for God's sake.

Bournemouth's forwards were bad but with Palace, it appears to afflict the entire team.
 
I imagine you'd also expect us to give away more fouls because we engage early and press high up the pitch, clipping a few ankles and such. Not surprising if we do give a lot of free kicks away but I don't see us making many nasty challenges. The one that flew in on McCarthy looked bad but aside from that did we make a rash challenge?
 
This ain’t going to be popular but I think we have been quite dirty so far. We have made a lot of deliberate fouls, similar to the type described in the article about Manchester city. Personally I don’t care, it’s an aspect of the gaMe I actually like.
 
If you're gunna pull United up for fouls as ref did Sunday he has to be consistent, Palace had this big guy black beard he committed at least 7 fouls never spoken to and took off by Woy before booked or sent off. They also got away with the most audacious diving I've seen since Tom Daley.
 
Addison said:
No there is a simple answer, Premiership refs. Physical contact of any type is not allowed. Any attempt to disrupt players hairstyles is frowned upon. Teams playing against us currently have a low foul count as we have not developed the dying swan routine favoured by premiership golden boys.

Apparently on Saturday the EPL are so concerned about our inability to fall down without physical contact they have arranged for a master class by one of the top exponents of this developing art. Step forward James Maddison.
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The fouls committed by United resulting in a free kick were no different to the ones committed by Palace which didn't result in a free kick. The actual difference was the accompanying dive. Like it or not, in the PL you have to dive to get a free kick or the ref will assume you haven't been touched.
 
bypassblade said:
If you're gunna pull United up for fouls as ref did Sunday he has to be consistent, Palace had this big guy black beard he committed at least 7 fouls never spoken to and took off by Woy before booked or sent off. They also got away with the most audacious diving I've seen since Tom Daley.
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Wrong. Since Grealish, who is a much better diver than Tom Daley. IMHO
UTB
 
BladeInIreland said:
This ain’t going to be popular but I think we have been quite dirty so far. We have made a lot of deliberate fouls, similar to the type described in the article about Manchester city. Personally I don’t care, it’s an aspect of the gaMe I actually like.
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Very true. Egan in particular could have easily been booked on Sunday. Ref was excellent, by the way. And the amount of free-kicks David McGoldrick 'won' at Bournemouth... all part of the game.
 

Wilder has admitted that he wants his players to take the challenges right up to the line of what is a foul.
So although we make plenty of hard physical challenges we are not a dirty side, we give it out but have no problems receiving it back.
Noticed how non of our players are divers and we don’t go down easily either.

As Wilders says “it’s a man’s games” and he likes his teams to be hard but fair.
Remember the Leeds away game 2 years ago, their defender did a leg braking red card sliding tactic on Baldock.
In the post match interview Wilder played it down saying he expects blood and thunder challenges in local derbies.

Adrian Durham on Talksport did make a good point that some referees in the PL might lower the threshold of what’s a foul.
He also suggested that opposition teams might tactically wait for the challenges, then go down to win free kicks on the edge of our box.
So he said it’s a potential area where teams might gain an advantage when playing SU.
 
Danny04 said:
Very true. Egan in particular could have easily been booked on Sunday. Ref was excellent, by the way. And the amount of free-kicks David McGoldrick 'won' at Bournemouth... all part of the game.
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I'm not disagreeing about any of the decisions the ref made (although the high boot on McBurnie does spring to mind) but I don't think you can describe a ref's performance as excellent when he has found himself in the way of play so many times!
 
I said on Sunday that we were naive giving freekicks away when players put themselves between our player and the ball. We appeared a bit too jack russell'ish at times and then they fell over and then the whistle went.
 
When you consider how much some of these players cost I'm not at all surprised some managers are a bit up tight really ...:cool:
 
Bleeding hell. We have the high count already and we haven't even let Mo Besic set foot on the pitch yet. It's going to be carnage by the end of the season.
 
All these PL players that fall over with a gust of wind, I'd love them to have come up against Trevor Hockey, Tommy Smith Dave McKay and a few others
 
It was something I'd picked up on a lot, especially in the Bournemouth game. It's something we certainly need to work on, but it may just be a necessary by product of how we are going about games. And becoming wiser to the sneaky ways of the Zaha's and Fraser's of this world will certainly get that stat down by the end of the season.
 

blade too long said:
Some owls fan on another site picked up on our 16 foul count called us dirty twats .
Funny thing is on BBC site millwall 1 swfc 0 Wednesday commited ,you guessed it 16 fouls
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You'd have thought they could count easily with all those fingers😁
 
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