Deadbat
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As I have traditionally done at the end of the last few seasons; it is that time again when I write a review of the campaign with a school report for the different sections of the club. I will look at how they have fared and what are the prospects for next season for each respective department of the club.
I will begin with the review and a breakdown of the board and managers. Over the next few days I will add to this with breakdowns of the players/squad at the club and do the same. Feel free to add comments/disagree/debate.....after each post I make.
I have graded the board, the managers, players and the fans; in a traditional school report style of A+ to F- (every player who started at least one league game).
However, I have had to grade players based on the games they did play so some players who played a lot more; may still get a lower grade despite disproportionate number of games in comparison. If I have missed anyone then please say!
Season review
To say this season has been a complete and utter disaster is not an exaggeration whatsoever. At the start of the season I felt like the worst we would achieve would be a middle of the league placing. We had been in the playoff final a season ago and finished the previous season on the verge of the playoffs despite losing some of our better players, having a number of injuries and having to rely on a plethora of loan players. We had kept messrs Morgan, Montgomery and Quinn (all who were rumoured to be leaving) and had added players who had excelled for Championship rivals such as Britton and Bogdanovic. Some fans felt we would contend for the top 6 but I reckoned the losses of further key men such as Kenny and Naysmith (granted they did not play much the previous year) and the lack of speed and creativity would mean we would fall short again. I did feel we would not be anywhere near the bottom with the experienced players we possessed such as Morgan, Henderson and Cresswell.
Of course I did not reckon on losing two of these for almost the entire season and the other basically clearly having lost his legs and not being up to it at this level any longer. The timing of the managerial changes were very poor and of course every single manager could have deemed to have failed. It just seemed one disastrous decision after another and things spiralled out of control with injuries, player departures, poor signings, reliance on loans (yet again after we said we would not go down this route) and then an appalling run of form post Xmas which basically condemned the Blades to League One football.
Kevin Blackwell had remained in charge despite many thinking we should have made a change at the end of the previous campaign. The feeling was the football was dire to watch and he could not take us any further. This coupled with his poor signings in the previous few seasons had many ready to jump onto his back at any kind of bad start for the side. However, even the grumblings over his style aside, most fans would concede that we generally won more than we lost under Blackwell and that mid table would be the absolute minimum.
The season began with a decent result at Cardiff when we had ten men for a lot of the game but got a draw against one of the favourites. However, a shocking showing at Hartlepool in the league cup was followed by disastrous defeat to Neil Warnock and QPR. With Paddy Kenny in the opposing goal; Rangers ran riot and Kevin McCabe made a quick decision to relieve Blackwell of his position. This was a shock to many with it being so soon in the season and many had felt like it was something that surely could/should have been done at the end of the previous campaign and that one result was surely not enough to make such a decision? Talk of prospective investors in the crowd, the Warnock/Kenny undercurrent all maybe accelerated the decision but whilst a lot have fans agreed with it; they probably did not agree with the timing. The feeling was either for doing it at the end of last season or leaving it for now.
Gary Speed was put in charge with many fans feeling positive about the appointment in that it would perhaps welcome a change of style, garner us more respect in the football world and also may lead to different kind of personnel coming into the club due to Speed’s reputation in the game. It did not begin will with an insipid performance against an equally poor Middlesbrough but a howler from Morgan saw Boyd strike a winner and United were bottom of the league. A week late Speed, and United, had their first win against Preston with maybe the goal of the season from Frenchman Calve on his debut. They then won on the road at Derby and things seemed to be looking up but the next run of games showed the inconsistencies of the side and maybe also of Speed. A good performance against Scunthorpe went unrewarded in a bizarre 4-0 reverse but they then beat Pompey in a less than convincing performance the following Saturday. The football was definitely improved and at times a slick passing style was witnessed despite the inconsistency in results. A narrow defeat at Leeds with another sending off, this time from Ward followed. Soon after the Blades drew at Forest but there was another howler from Simonsen, which was becoming a feature of the young season, saw United placed in 18th place at the end of September and any promotion hopes seemed a long way off.
Things got no better as a tame defeat at home to Watford and then an exciting draw with Burnley only came about due to a late goal from the resurgent Yeates. United won at Hull with Yeates on target again but they then put in an abject showing against local rivals Doncaster on live TV when they lost 2-0 but it would have been much more comprehensive as Rovers out passed and outplayed a meek United team. Two more defeats at home came against Coventry and Ipswich and the excellent home record of seasons past was a forgotten memory as the Blades were a soft touch at Bramall Lane with teams licking their chops at a visit to S2. Skipper Morgan was also now ruled out for the remainder of the season with severe ligament damage. The early promise in change of style has now all but disappeared and Speed was clearly struggling to get much out of this collection of players, many of which he had inherited, with Andy Reid the only notable incoming signing.
An unfortunate penalty at Leicester in the final minute robbed the Blades of a deserved win but they did win at Millwall, with loanee Reid now the focal point of the team, hitting a great individual goal. A strange game against fellow struggles Palace came the week after in front of the Sky cameras but United edged a 5 goal thriller with some of the most bizarre refereeing decisions you could wish to see befuddling both sides! A late penalty from Bogdanovic was the difference. United then were easily beaten at Bristol City as rumours of a potential approach for Gary Speed from the Welsh FA were now coming to the surface. A week later the Blades once again lost rather easily at Oakwell and it seemed clear that Speed would be allowed to go now the approach had been confirmed. Sure enough the following week, Speed moved on. He said all the right things about his move but you got the feeling he could not wait to get out with a poor squad and the team seemingly on a downward slide. For what it is worth most United fans were not particularly upset to see Speed move on and the fact that the board did not put up much of a fight seemed to suggest it maybe suited all parties. Maybe it was the right man at the wrong time but that remains to be seen whether Speed can go on and be a success in the game. His early promise at United quickly evaporated and soon United had become undisciplined, easy to beat and as predictable as they were under Blackwell with no pace and simply no one who could put the ball in the net as evidenced by their appalling goals for record.
For the next few games whilst rumours of the next new manager circled around the internet forums and clubs/pubs; the Blades had caretaker manager John Carver in charge. The Blades began well beating Swansea in a decent performance just before Christmas but two high scoring defeats to Hull and Norwich followed. The first came thanks to a last minute breakaway winner and then at Carrow Road, due to some controversial refereeing with another suspect penalty being conceded (another feature of United’s season). Carver’s reaction after this latest loss confirmed he knew he/the refs/his players had blown his chance. United were now 4th from bottom and clearly locked in a relegation battle.
It seemed the appointment was between Sean O’Driscoll and Micky Adams and despite rumours and counter rumours over O’Driscoll being now the frontrunner; a week passed and no appointment was made. The Doncaster manager then said he was staying at the Keepmoat which suggested that talks had taken place but for whatever reason the appointment was not made. Days later Adams was put in charge with a bizarre interview from CEO Trevor Birch suggesting things maybe had not gone quite as they had hoped in the appointment after his words only weeks earlier.
A defeat at Burnley opened the Adams tenure poorly and then a late Kozluk goal stole a point at home to Doncaster. The Blades then went out of the Cup days later to Premiership Aston Villa despite a brave effort. A point at Coventry promised a more resolute unit but more home defeats defeats to Norwich and Leicester soon followed. Adams was clearly already in trouble and seemed powerless to turn things around. Players such as Britton, Bartley and Ward departed with Doyle and Collins coming in to raised eyebrows. More loanees came in with Lowry, Bent, Mattock all arriving. It seemed to make little difference as despite two penalties won and converted by Bogdanovic to earn two draws versus Millwall and Reading; the first win for Adams would not come and they were stuck in the bottom three.
Faced with three crunch games in a week against relegation rivals; Adams had to get off the mark; but a defeat at Palace was followed by an awful evening in Lincolnshire as United somehow coughed up a two goal lead to lose to the lowly Iron. Days later the Blades produced another lacklustre performance as they lost to a poor Derby side. It seemed now that it was debatable whether Adams would see the season out as United seemed entrenched in the relegation places. United lost on the South Coast at Portsmouth but finally the long awaited victory came against promotion seeking Forest at the Lane with young Lowton heading a winner at the Kop end. It was back to the drawing board though for Adams the following Saturday as a dreadful first half at Watford saw United lose 2 goals and 2 players with the shocking indiscipline rearing its ugly head again regardless of how much the coaches and fans protested about unfortunate decisions.
United finally put in a complete performance when they saw off Leeds 2-0 and could have won the game 5 or 6. This maybe would signal the start of the late revival? It was another false sawn as they were beaten easily at leaders QPR and then after missing several chances contrived to lose at home again; this time to Middlesboro with a late goal being a hammer blow. They lost in more usual circumstances to Cardiff the following Tuesday and it seemed relegation now was inevitable. The following week relegation rivals Preston put them to the sword and United were now rock bottom and it was only a matter of time before their fate was confirmed.
An introduction of young players buoyed them to rare back to back wins against Bristol City and then unbelievably at Reading, after being two down. However the coup de grace was delivered by local neighbours Barnsley who scored a late goal to earn a draw and with it relegated the Blades to the third tier of English football for the first time since 1988. The season ended rather predictably with the final game seeing yet another poor performance and hammering coming at Swansea.
It was a season that saw 10 home league defeats, 5 draws and 7 victories. On the road United only won 4 games (with only one in the final 14 away games) drew 4 and lost 15. United scored 44 goals and conceded 79 goals. Quite simply we did not score enough (Evans leading scorer with 9) and conceded goals aplenty. Some of the goals we let in and the errors we made were laughable and the fact we went long spells without creating anything let along scoring made games almost impossible to win at times. Factor in really poor discipline (most red cards 11) and even some appalling bad luck and poor refereeing decisions (certainly not reasons we went down – we were not good enough) and seemed nothing would go right.
It was a season that began poorly and just got worse and worse with managerial chances seemingly every few months and more player departures only replaced by plug in’s/loan signings. We never seemed to have the same team, the defence had no understanding, certain players played no matter what and others were dropped after one bad game. We used a total of 40 players (which was the joint highest in the Championship) and it seemed a revolving door at the Lane but one that often saw the squad quality lessened as the season went on.
There was mismanagement of the squad from the board and management team in terms of the signings made and how they were used. Not many players could truly say they had a good season and most of the managers failed to get the best out of players they had no matter what could be said about the diminishing quality of the overall squad; save for brief late spells by Quinn and Lowton and maybe some patches from Yeates and Evans earlier in the season. Players who had performed creditably previously such as Simonsen, Nosworthy and Cresswell were simply awful and many other signings did not work.
The bad performances and results just snowballed and it seemed no one could do anything about it. You still thought United may still have enough to get out of it but the terrible run around the end of February to the bottom sides was a sign that they probably would not survive. It was hard to say many positive things about the season, besides the late development of the young players and the unswerving support of the majority if the fans. The future has so many question marks and no one is quite sure what the composition of the coaching and playing staff will be.
I will begin with the review and a breakdown of the board and managers. Over the next few days I will add to this with breakdowns of the players/squad at the club and do the same. Feel free to add comments/disagree/debate.....after each post I make.
I have graded the board, the managers, players and the fans; in a traditional school report style of A+ to F- (every player who started at least one league game).
However, I have had to grade players based on the games they did play so some players who played a lot more; may still get a lower grade despite disproportionate number of games in comparison. If I have missed anyone then please say!
Season review
To say this season has been a complete and utter disaster is not an exaggeration whatsoever. At the start of the season I felt like the worst we would achieve would be a middle of the league placing. We had been in the playoff final a season ago and finished the previous season on the verge of the playoffs despite losing some of our better players, having a number of injuries and having to rely on a plethora of loan players. We had kept messrs Morgan, Montgomery and Quinn (all who were rumoured to be leaving) and had added players who had excelled for Championship rivals such as Britton and Bogdanovic. Some fans felt we would contend for the top 6 but I reckoned the losses of further key men such as Kenny and Naysmith (granted they did not play much the previous year) and the lack of speed and creativity would mean we would fall short again. I did feel we would not be anywhere near the bottom with the experienced players we possessed such as Morgan, Henderson and Cresswell.
Of course I did not reckon on losing two of these for almost the entire season and the other basically clearly having lost his legs and not being up to it at this level any longer. The timing of the managerial changes were very poor and of course every single manager could have deemed to have failed. It just seemed one disastrous decision after another and things spiralled out of control with injuries, player departures, poor signings, reliance on loans (yet again after we said we would not go down this route) and then an appalling run of form post Xmas which basically condemned the Blades to League One football.
Kevin Blackwell had remained in charge despite many thinking we should have made a change at the end of the previous campaign. The feeling was the football was dire to watch and he could not take us any further. This coupled with his poor signings in the previous few seasons had many ready to jump onto his back at any kind of bad start for the side. However, even the grumblings over his style aside, most fans would concede that we generally won more than we lost under Blackwell and that mid table would be the absolute minimum.
The season began with a decent result at Cardiff when we had ten men for a lot of the game but got a draw against one of the favourites. However, a shocking showing at Hartlepool in the league cup was followed by disastrous defeat to Neil Warnock and QPR. With Paddy Kenny in the opposing goal; Rangers ran riot and Kevin McCabe made a quick decision to relieve Blackwell of his position. This was a shock to many with it being so soon in the season and many had felt like it was something that surely could/should have been done at the end of the previous campaign and that one result was surely not enough to make such a decision? Talk of prospective investors in the crowd, the Warnock/Kenny undercurrent all maybe accelerated the decision but whilst a lot have fans agreed with it; they probably did not agree with the timing. The feeling was either for doing it at the end of last season or leaving it for now.
Gary Speed was put in charge with many fans feeling positive about the appointment in that it would perhaps welcome a change of style, garner us more respect in the football world and also may lead to different kind of personnel coming into the club due to Speed’s reputation in the game. It did not begin will with an insipid performance against an equally poor Middlesbrough but a howler from Morgan saw Boyd strike a winner and United were bottom of the league. A week late Speed, and United, had their first win against Preston with maybe the goal of the season from Frenchman Calve on his debut. They then won on the road at Derby and things seemed to be looking up but the next run of games showed the inconsistencies of the side and maybe also of Speed. A good performance against Scunthorpe went unrewarded in a bizarre 4-0 reverse but they then beat Pompey in a less than convincing performance the following Saturday. The football was definitely improved and at times a slick passing style was witnessed despite the inconsistency in results. A narrow defeat at Leeds with another sending off, this time from Ward followed. Soon after the Blades drew at Forest but there was another howler from Simonsen, which was becoming a feature of the young season, saw United placed in 18th place at the end of September and any promotion hopes seemed a long way off.
Things got no better as a tame defeat at home to Watford and then an exciting draw with Burnley only came about due to a late goal from the resurgent Yeates. United won at Hull with Yeates on target again but they then put in an abject showing against local rivals Doncaster on live TV when they lost 2-0 but it would have been much more comprehensive as Rovers out passed and outplayed a meek United team. Two more defeats at home came against Coventry and Ipswich and the excellent home record of seasons past was a forgotten memory as the Blades were a soft touch at Bramall Lane with teams licking their chops at a visit to S2. Skipper Morgan was also now ruled out for the remainder of the season with severe ligament damage. The early promise in change of style has now all but disappeared and Speed was clearly struggling to get much out of this collection of players, many of which he had inherited, with Andy Reid the only notable incoming signing.
An unfortunate penalty at Leicester in the final minute robbed the Blades of a deserved win but they did win at Millwall, with loanee Reid now the focal point of the team, hitting a great individual goal. A strange game against fellow struggles Palace came the week after in front of the Sky cameras but United edged a 5 goal thriller with some of the most bizarre refereeing decisions you could wish to see befuddling both sides! A late penalty from Bogdanovic was the difference. United then were easily beaten at Bristol City as rumours of a potential approach for Gary Speed from the Welsh FA were now coming to the surface. A week later the Blades once again lost rather easily at Oakwell and it seemed clear that Speed would be allowed to go now the approach had been confirmed. Sure enough the following week, Speed moved on. He said all the right things about his move but you got the feeling he could not wait to get out with a poor squad and the team seemingly on a downward slide. For what it is worth most United fans were not particularly upset to see Speed move on and the fact that the board did not put up much of a fight seemed to suggest it maybe suited all parties. Maybe it was the right man at the wrong time but that remains to be seen whether Speed can go on and be a success in the game. His early promise at United quickly evaporated and soon United had become undisciplined, easy to beat and as predictable as they were under Blackwell with no pace and simply no one who could put the ball in the net as evidenced by their appalling goals for record.
For the next few games whilst rumours of the next new manager circled around the internet forums and clubs/pubs; the Blades had caretaker manager John Carver in charge. The Blades began well beating Swansea in a decent performance just before Christmas but two high scoring defeats to Hull and Norwich followed. The first came thanks to a last minute breakaway winner and then at Carrow Road, due to some controversial refereeing with another suspect penalty being conceded (another feature of United’s season). Carver’s reaction after this latest loss confirmed he knew he/the refs/his players had blown his chance. United were now 4th from bottom and clearly locked in a relegation battle.
It seemed the appointment was between Sean O’Driscoll and Micky Adams and despite rumours and counter rumours over O’Driscoll being now the frontrunner; a week passed and no appointment was made. The Doncaster manager then said he was staying at the Keepmoat which suggested that talks had taken place but for whatever reason the appointment was not made. Days later Adams was put in charge with a bizarre interview from CEO Trevor Birch suggesting things maybe had not gone quite as they had hoped in the appointment after his words only weeks earlier.
A defeat at Burnley opened the Adams tenure poorly and then a late Kozluk goal stole a point at home to Doncaster. The Blades then went out of the Cup days later to Premiership Aston Villa despite a brave effort. A point at Coventry promised a more resolute unit but more home defeats defeats to Norwich and Leicester soon followed. Adams was clearly already in trouble and seemed powerless to turn things around. Players such as Britton, Bartley and Ward departed with Doyle and Collins coming in to raised eyebrows. More loanees came in with Lowry, Bent, Mattock all arriving. It seemed to make little difference as despite two penalties won and converted by Bogdanovic to earn two draws versus Millwall and Reading; the first win for Adams would not come and they were stuck in the bottom three.
Faced with three crunch games in a week against relegation rivals; Adams had to get off the mark; but a defeat at Palace was followed by an awful evening in Lincolnshire as United somehow coughed up a two goal lead to lose to the lowly Iron. Days later the Blades produced another lacklustre performance as they lost to a poor Derby side. It seemed now that it was debatable whether Adams would see the season out as United seemed entrenched in the relegation places. United lost on the South Coast at Portsmouth but finally the long awaited victory came against promotion seeking Forest at the Lane with young Lowton heading a winner at the Kop end. It was back to the drawing board though for Adams the following Saturday as a dreadful first half at Watford saw United lose 2 goals and 2 players with the shocking indiscipline rearing its ugly head again regardless of how much the coaches and fans protested about unfortunate decisions.
United finally put in a complete performance when they saw off Leeds 2-0 and could have won the game 5 or 6. This maybe would signal the start of the late revival? It was another false sawn as they were beaten easily at leaders QPR and then after missing several chances contrived to lose at home again; this time to Middlesboro with a late goal being a hammer blow. They lost in more usual circumstances to Cardiff the following Tuesday and it seemed relegation now was inevitable. The following week relegation rivals Preston put them to the sword and United were now rock bottom and it was only a matter of time before their fate was confirmed.
An introduction of young players buoyed them to rare back to back wins against Bristol City and then unbelievably at Reading, after being two down. However the coup de grace was delivered by local neighbours Barnsley who scored a late goal to earn a draw and with it relegated the Blades to the third tier of English football for the first time since 1988. The season ended rather predictably with the final game seeing yet another poor performance and hammering coming at Swansea.
It was a season that saw 10 home league defeats, 5 draws and 7 victories. On the road United only won 4 games (with only one in the final 14 away games) drew 4 and lost 15. United scored 44 goals and conceded 79 goals. Quite simply we did not score enough (Evans leading scorer with 9) and conceded goals aplenty. Some of the goals we let in and the errors we made were laughable and the fact we went long spells without creating anything let along scoring made games almost impossible to win at times. Factor in really poor discipline (most red cards 11) and even some appalling bad luck and poor refereeing decisions (certainly not reasons we went down – we were not good enough) and seemed nothing would go right.
It was a season that began poorly and just got worse and worse with managerial chances seemingly every few months and more player departures only replaced by plug in’s/loan signings. We never seemed to have the same team, the defence had no understanding, certain players played no matter what and others were dropped after one bad game. We used a total of 40 players (which was the joint highest in the Championship) and it seemed a revolving door at the Lane but one that often saw the squad quality lessened as the season went on.
There was mismanagement of the squad from the board and management team in terms of the signings made and how they were used. Not many players could truly say they had a good season and most of the managers failed to get the best out of players they had no matter what could be said about the diminishing quality of the overall squad; save for brief late spells by Quinn and Lowton and maybe some patches from Yeates and Evans earlier in the season. Players who had performed creditably previously such as Simonsen, Nosworthy and Cresswell were simply awful and many other signings did not work.
The bad performances and results just snowballed and it seemed no one could do anything about it. You still thought United may still have enough to get out of it but the terrible run around the end of February to the bottom sides was a sign that they probably would not survive. It was hard to say many positive things about the season, besides the late development of the young players and the unswerving support of the majority if the fans. The future has so many question marks and no one is quite sure what the composition of the coaching and playing staff will be.
Hahaha.
