BladesPod - latest episodes

[Frank the tank]

Once they got their noses in front they controlled the game really well.
I distinctly remember their away end giving it the "Olés" as they comfortably played it around us.
You're right though, fortunate to go 1-3 up as we did have some big chances.


I thought you'd have a lot more to say than hone in on that specific point though.

Respectfully, would be interested to know what your thoughts are on the state of play, as we often differ a bit in outlook.

I think as far as the performance /results
Dichotomy things came to a head Saturday
Up until then we've ridden out a thin squad and Injuries to key personnel
With sheer bloody mindedness and will to win
I must admit to being slight envious of other teams fluid, one touch football at times but I'm sure they would all swap places with us tommorow

Things have as I said, come to a head and I feel that now wilder has got the depth to his swisf he has craved all season he has effectively wasted 2 weeks playing the out of position or in a system that isn't bringing out the best in anyone

He has to get a response out of them and give the team an identity because at the moment it doesn't have one

For me holding has to come in and we have to hope he fits in straight away as a replacement for souttar and he has to build from. Clean sheets
We havent looked like keeping one since souttar got Injured apart from v Norwich who never attacked us

I'm not sure how he does it except for getting g higher I tesity out of everyone as that seems to have dropped as seen by peck who after being rested stood out like a sore thumb, continuity and consistency will bring more fluid and confident football but it's going to have to. Come from the back and being able to play out from the back which is a real issue right now

 

[Sheffsteel]

Ndiaye missed a great chance at 2-1 too. They deserved the win but it was a really good game for the most part

Agree…..I remember that we put in a good performance that night…normally playing like that…we win
It was a high quality match and a great advert for the Championship, quite similar to the Boro v Sunderland match last werk
However we ended up losing 1-3 and Boro were slightly the better team on the night….very impressive and in spells looked PL standard.

I felt down after that match because I realised that if Boro played like that….they were capable of winning almost all their remaining matches
and as expected they did follow up that impressive display with more impressive displays comfortably winning about 5 consecutive games.
Then for no apparent reason….they simply loss form and we pulled away as comfortably being promoted.

 

[Nesh Blade]

Surprised to hear Roy praising Doak, a change to the anti Scottish Bladespod agenda!

 

[Beans]

Surprised to hear Roy praising Doak, a change to the anti Scottish Bladespod agenda!

I assume he thought Doh-ak was Czech or something.

 

[coaxingstar71]

I really hope that Wilder would be willing to admit to mistakes, in terms of team selection, formation and tactics, for the good of the club and not rigidly stick to something that clearly isn't working. The Cannon signing is at odds with his now, apparent, preferred formation set up with one up front. Cannon can't play up there on his own as a lone striker because he doesn't offer anything other than, presumably (as we're yet to see it in a Blades shirt) putting the ball in the net. So he either drops his big signing to the bench and plays either Campbell or Moore up there, or he changes his formation and plays two up front, which will suit Cannon's 'style' (I've put that in ' ' as it seems inappropriate to suggest that Cannon has any style yet).

The other conundrum is whether Choudury and Souza can effectively play together. Arguably we should only be starting one of them with either Peck or Davies (or Arblaster) when fit.

Going with two up front would probably create other problems in terms of what formation we play and how we fit our best players into it. I think that's partly the problem, if Wilder picks who he thinks are our best 11 individual players, they wouldn't fit cohesively into a formation that would allow us to work effectively as a team.

 

[Cappy]

Another good one gents, cheers. You always know it's gonna be good when Ben starts it off with "It'll be a shorter one today"...

 

[Wapping Blade]

Grumpy Ben’s back! Hope we do better tonight for his sanity…

 

[Revolution]

enjoyed the pod, and thanks for the name check. Funny that we got a good performance after Wilder made the changes that you (and others) wanted.

Looking forward to a sunny side up pod after last night!

Re Brewster’s miss - you would think that in 5 years at the club someone has tried to teach him to finish. If so, it hasn’t worked.

 

[Beans]

Afternoon S2, an unsurprisingly more-upbeat episode from Roygbiv and me here, savouring United's dismantling of Boro with Sydie Peck to the fore:



Thanks as always for listening!

 

[Nesh Blade]

Afternoon S2, an unsurprisingly more-upbeat episode from Roygbiv and me here, savouring United's dismantling of Boro with Sydie Peck to the fore:



Thanks as always for listening!

Delighted by a double pod week thanks chaps!!

 

[I should coco]

Afternoon S2, an unsurprisingly more-upbeat episode from Roygbiv and me here, savouring United's dismantling of Boro with Sydie Peck to the fore:



Thanks as always for listening!

Thanks for keeping them coming and producing these to a very high standard.

No bin-day news, but then again, you can't have everything in a United podcast.

 

[Beans]

Hi S2, new pod here with Roygbiv, talking about a messy-but-important win at Luton, the state of the promotion race, and Monday's visit of Leeds. Cheers for listening!

 

[Sheffsteel]

Agree with Ben…..altho the Luton game had similarities to the Portsmouth game it wasn’t as one sided as the Pompey game.
Another similarity is that the games changed and we greatly improved when then subs came on.

The XG stats show Luton 1.63 Sheff Utd 1.96.
So altho a draw would have been fair….if any team deserved to win….based on chances we were slightly the better team.

Also agree our skill of winning when playing below par is not a fluke.
Also as Andrew says, instead of thinking maybe results will catch up with performances….it’s more likely that we’ll click and performances will get better.

Excellent point from Andrew about the Burnley manager and Burnley players seemingly happy not to lose…hence they get loads of draws.
Instead of risking it, pushing men forward, Parker seems obsessed with putting the breaks on and keeping clean sheets.
It’s quite comical really..Parker seems to be putting a bigger priority on beating Chelsea less goals conceded record….instead of gambling trying to win games.

The BBD miss was just unlucky….the cross was bobbling on a dodgy pitch and just as he kicked it towards goal the ball bobbled up.

Enjoyed that….thanks.

 

[Cappy]

Kenilworth road “is brilliant because it’s awful” is a great description

 

[Sheffsteel]

Kenilworth road “is brilliant because it’s awful” is a great description

That’s funny because it’s so true.

I bet the US visitor Noah, won’t forget it….when he’s back in America and asked to describe Luton’s ground….he’ll be lost for words.

 

[Balham]

See I have a memory that Sky were talking about a reduction as the product wasn`t the same with no-one in the ground.

I've just done a bit of digging on this. The short answer is that it's hard to tell from clubs' financial statements, because the pandemic TV money revenue ended up going across different financial years (the 2019/20 season ended in July, where the financial year for football clubs ends in June). Overall, it looks like TV money neither increased nor decreased, but matchday revenue substantially fell. This is for top-flight clubs.

Bit late to this particular party but Sky and settled a £150m case with the Premier League caused by the decision to cancel all games for three months. If I recall correctly the rebate was equally distributed meaning we would have lost around £7.5m. In the intervening period, however, a new deal had kicked in meaning that the net impact from season to season was limited.

We lost £6.1m between 19/20 and 20/21 in matchday revenue and £17.7m in merit payments after finishing in 20th rather than 9th; offset partly by a £12.9m decrease in wages and other costs.

All figures above restated to 12 months owing to the financial chicanery used by Blades Leisure at that time (19/20 was a 13-month accounting period; 20/21 was 11 months).

 

[Revolution]

Good pod.

Funny, isn't it, that having broken the Xg for scale last time they were promoted (87 goals from 66xg) Burnley are now breaking the xg against scale. Trafford's save percentage (88 per cent) is phenomenal. It comes as little surprise to me that Beadle is down at 63 per cent.

 

[Beans]

Good pod.

Funny, isn't it, that having broken the Xg for scale last time they were promoted (87 goals from 66xg) Burnley are now breaking the xg against scale. Trafford's save percentage (88 per cent) is phenomenal. It comes as little surprise to me that Beadle is down at 63 per cent.

Beadle has been a below-average Championship keeper this season looking at xG On Target (post-shot xG here). Of every keeper to play more than 10 games this season there's only 5 who have performed worse. Amusingly Adam Davies has saved us more goals this season in his two starts than Beadle has for Wednesday.

Cooper is 6th in this metric, having been "worth" 6.4 goals saved so far. Trafford has been superb to be fair to Burnley's mental defensive overperformance, worth 9.3 goals saved.

One-time target Viktor Johanssen is at a ludicrous 15.8, by far the best in the league. Mad to think how rubbish Stoke have been despite having that level of shot-stopping in between the sticks.

 

[Balham]

Beadle has been a below-average Championship keeper this season looking at xG On Target (post-shot xG here). Of every keeper to play more than 10 games this season there's only 5 who have performed worse. Amusingly Adam Davies has saved us more goals this season in his two starts than Beadle has for Wednesday.

Cooper is 6th in this metric, having been "worth" 6.4 goals saved so far. Trafford has been superb to be fair to Burnley's mental defensive overperformance, worth 9.3 goals saved.

One-time target Viktor Johanssen is at a ludicrous 15.8, by far the best in the league. Mad to think how rubbish Stoke have been despite having that level of shot-stopping in between the sticks.

I'd suggest that it is a little more nuanced. Johanssen's psxGA is as high as it is because Stoke's defence is poor. He has conceded 36 goals from opponents (xG and xGA don't consider own goals) against a psxGA of 51.8: he's at 69.5% goals conceded vs expected. On this metric Trafford is even better, his 9 conceded against 18.3 psxGA mean he's conceded fewer than half the goals that he should have.

At 75.8% conceded vs expected, Cooper is 5th on this metric, behind Trafford, Conor Hazard at Plymouth (suggesting that Plymouth may have been right to cash in on Cooper) on 68.7%, Johansson and Coventry's Oliver Dovin on 74.4%.

Other notable keepers: wind-up merchant Angus Gunn 29th of 31 on 121.6%, former Blade George Long one spot above Gunn on 116.5%, Middlesbrough using four keepers so far this season and them all being average (Brynn on 95.7%, Dieng in 27th on 115.9%, Glover in 30th on 153.8%; Travers yet to play enough games to qualify), gaff-prone Leeds keeper Ilian Meslier actually being pretty decent in 11th on 92.8% and England's next #1 James Beadle in 21st at 103.7%.

Stats from fbref, image below is a link to the source but the final column is one I've added. All keepers with more than 5 full appearances qualify.

 

[Selly]

Looking forward to Beans having a bit of a moan about this...

 

[Cappy]

Looking forward to Beans having a bit of a moan about this...

View attachment 204914

We better beat them. That’s all I care about. Twats

 

[Beans]

View attachment 204915

We better beat them. That’s all I care about. Twats

They've beaten a bunch of midtable crap in those ten games + Blackburn who are somehow still in a playoff spot. Not for me. There's a reason Lampard waited until the week after they'd played us and Burnley before he joined...

They are a good team and may well make the playoffs but I still think they'd have done the same if they'd just held onto Robins (they were largely out playing teams but just having shit luck in both boxes).

 

[Beans]

Afternoon all, Roygbiv and I talked about the Leeds game here - found quite a lot to like about that performance and enjoyed the game overall, so fairly upbeat in defeat. Cheers for listening!

 

[lazyfecklessblade]

Possibly the most positive pod of the season! Cheers fellas, I did also feel good about the performance - although I am decidedly more mardy about conceding the third from our own kick off.

If we do the first hour of that performance 10 more times we’ll go up with a week to spare.

 

[Nesh Blade]

Afternoon all, Roygbiv and I talked about the Leeds game here - found quite a lot to like about that performance and enjoyed the game overall, so fairly upbeat in defeat. Cheers for listening!

Have to admit to doing a mardy flounce when the 3rd went in. Agree though it was a good performance, but doesn’t mean I was receptive to my dad saying their third was a great hit on the walk back to the car

 

[Revolution]

More excellent analysis of this game. Good pod.

I disagree on you re it being Campbell's goal, though. If he'd wanted the goal he could have headed the ball in from 6 inches out. The ball was not going to cross the line until Meslier inexplicably knocked it backwards over the line. An awful piece of keeping.

It's funny, we seem to have scored a number of goals this season where the opposition have done daft things. 3 involve O'Hare - the winner at home to Watford, his goal at WBA where the whole defence helped lay it on, and JRS's goal v Boro - and there's also the Swansea own goal at the Lane and O'Nien's own goal at Sunderland. There seems to have been more of this stuff than usual.

 

[Beans]

More excellent analysis of this game. Good pod.

I disagree on you re it being Campbell's goal, though. If he'd wanted the goal he could have headed the ball in from 6 inches out. The ball was not going to cross the line until Meslier inexplicably knocked it backwards over the line. An awful piece of keeping.

It's funny, we seem to have scored a number of goals this season where the opposition have done daft things. 3 involve O'Hare - the winner at home to Watford, his goal at WBA where the whole defence helped lay it on, and JRS's goal v Boro - and there's also the Swansea own goal at the Lane and O'Nien's own goal at Sunderland. There seems to have been more of this stuff than usual.

Yeah ive seen the "Campbell" goal properly now. It was intended to be a bit more tongue in cheek than it probably came across, as I'm personally invested in Campbell doing well after banging the drum for him before he signed, and also wary of Roy's left field prediction coming true - we've now benefitted from the joint most OGs in the league...

 

[Beans]

Afternoon S2, new episode here with Roygbiv talking QPR and the return of Paul Heckingbottom on Saturday. Cheers for listening!

 

[Selly]

Afternoon S2, new episode here with Roygbiv talking QPR and the return of Paul Heckingbottom on Saturday. Cheers for listening!

Believe Anel only need to avoid getting booked in there next 2 games to avoid a suspension, not the next 3.

 

[Beans]

Believe Anel only need to avoid getting booked in there next 2 games to avoid a suspension, not the next 3.

You're right, apologies I misread Cappy's extremely helpful bookings thread. Surely he can get through two games without a yellow...