Just to chuck my two-bobs worth into the mix...
In our current circumstances, that went about as well as can be expected. Squad spread so thin due to injuries that we couldn't risk playing certain individuals for fear of picking up more injuries to vital players. So we're left with a combination of a couple of regular starters (Gilchrist, Burrows), some squad/rotational players (Brooks, Brewster, Oné, Davies, RND, McCallum), and then several kids to add to the mix (Baptiste, Blacker, Marsh). Some of which will have (probably) barely played together before, if at all. The performance was thoroughly unsurprising to me as a result. Very disjointed, it looked like what it was - a group of individuals being asked to play as a team, when they've no experience together of doing so.
Credit to Davies, I thought he had a decent game tonight. Was left horrendously exposed by the RND error for their goal. No blame on him for that one in my eyes. Made several smart saves to keep it at 1-0. No mistakes to speak of - he just happened to get beaten once, but again, there was a far bigger issue than anything Davies did in that one.
Baptiste did well also for me. Looks a fairly strong lad, and kept his composure well when put under pressure. Looks a very smart acquisition on what I've seen of him so far; hopefully he can continue to improve from here.
I can't help but feel bad for RND. I just want him to get fit and be able to play some football matches. Watching him get carried off at Luton last season was just heartbreaking; you could tell that he knew it was a bad injury, so soon after returning from another one. Hopefully this time it's nothing too serious. But all that said, he had a mare last night.
I don't have a problem with him trying to step inside their forward. The issue comes when, once that doesn't work, he fails to recognise the threat properly. He cuts infield, and never considers that his poor touch is allowing their lad to press him. He just seems to think he can prod it into midfield and get away with it. He should have been going back to Davies instead to retain possession, but instead he gifts their lad a free run on goal.
A few wholly unmemorable performances. Burrows was invisible for most of the match I thought, though a part of that is probably due to him playing CM suddenly. Good effort off the post though, but I'm mightily glad it didn't go in and risk extra time!
Marsh never really got into the game. One looping header in the first half, but very little else from him that I noticed. Brooks was very hot and cold, perfectly demonstrated by one moment in the 2nd half, where he skinned a man down the line, and then tried to cross with his right foot and basically passed it to the first defender.
Brewster I thought did alright. Tried to get us moving with some runs forward, but very little desire around him to match that effort. Should have done better with a couple of the chances he had.
Overall, the game delivered the level of spectacle that the setting deserved. A third round FA Cup tie between two teams in the same league, on a freezing cold Thursday night, is the perfect setting for an abjectly desperate level of quality, from both sides. But I do not care one jot that we lost.
Is it nice to win football matches? Of course it is. But with the volume of injuries we have, even if some are close to a return as Wilder is saying, the worst thing that could happen to us is that we have to play more games. So getting knocked out now nips that in the bud.
A shame that we couldn't deliver a better performance, but we can now follow that old chestnut, and "concentrate on the league".
Very funny that the presenter on BBC Wales opened the broadcast last night by saying "It's 100 years since Sheffield United won this trophy. Could they lift it again this year?" Not with displays like that we won't.
