Southampton vs Sheffield United

EFL Championship Matchweek 28 - Tuesday 21st January 2026 - 19:45 - St. Mary's
Please keep all discussion related to the match within this thread.

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Officials:

Referee: Thomas Kirk
Assistants: Matthew Smith & Sam Lewis
Fourth Official: Andrew Humphries

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[reedy63]

Rubbish in the first half bit better in the second half against Southampton, this is not good enough. There is a lack of fitness in the team, in my opinion. Giving the ball away, okay, the goal was a rebound. We have to play better; we will finish in the bottom eight at this rate. The playoffs are a long way off unless Chris Wilder can bring in good players with time running out. We need to go on a winning run but I dont think they will. I hope I am proven wrong.

 

[Belvedere Blade]

 

[RAP51]

There has been a long held assumption on by some on here that the return of Oli Arblaster after his long injury would bring about a significant improvement in our performances and solve any of the midfield weaknesses we had shown so far this season .

I always had severe reservations about this line of thought , on the basis that (a) - he he has never shown that he is that kind of player and (b) history shows that after such an injury very few players quickly return to the level they were at before and in some cases , sadly never do .

Whilst it is true that many other players in Wilder’s bizarre team selection last night offered very little , his performance was one of the worst .

I dearly hope that he can recover the promise that he previously showed , but it is abundantly clear that at present he is nowhere near that level and that at best , he should only merit a place on the bench .

I expected Arblaster to be a while getting back up to speed if he actually does.
He had a very serious injury and as you say many never fully recover.
Fortunately Arblaster is young which is in his favour as far as recovery goes and also his game was not based on pace but on his ability to read the game which hopefully will mean he is able eventually to get back to his pre injury levels.
My biggest concern is that we are playing him far too much at this stage of his rehabilitation which may result in him picking up other injuries, hamstrings etc and even worse may cause further damage to the original injury before he has fully built up his strength.
It's all very well this mass rotation of the squad, which I think has been overdone in the last few games but we should certainly be managing a prize asset like Arblaster much more carefully.