Winning ugly

[Harry's Game]

Ground one out there, glad to see it, played a lot of good football at times since November for sometimes little reward so we’ve earned one of those.

Excellent decision to bring Lafferty on when we did too toughened the midfield up and saw the last ten out comfortably when we were wobbling.

 

[dc_blade]

Good substitutions, which hasn't always been Wilder's strongest suit. After 10 minutes where they had us on the rack, Leonard and Lafferty made things more solid, and Don did a fantastic job of pressing, holding up the ball, and generally making a nuisance of himself.

 

[blade too long]

got a good bit of grit in the squad now to see out games
hopefully can squeeze more 2-1 wins out of games we had been drawing

still strikers not converting a high enough percentage of our many chances created

 

[Lil red rooster]

safe from relegation after that result .

 

[zablade]

Leonard and Lafferty were excellent when they came on, not sure about Donaldson though looked leggy.

Clarke back to his near his best at times tonight as well

JOC Motm for me though class act

 

[Alfreton14Blade]

No easy games, as they say. Got to give credit to QPR for finding a way back & making it very uncomfortable just when it seemed like we were cruising. But even more credit to us for the grit & the game management towards the end. On a mini roll now!

 

[South Bucks]

52 points before the end of feb so safe now and time for a fifty point party, would have taken just staying up in before the season started. Well done all.

 

[Hackblade]

Good call. Staying up was the main aim in August. Achieved in February. Well done United.

 

[ShockingBadBuy]

A win’s a win. Not sure we really deserved it, but despite outplaying us for the last 30 mins they barely threatened our goal, so, fair enough I guess.

Disappointing to see us concede from the same pocket of space 18-25 yards out, yet again. Seems to be every week just about, at the moment.

Well played Lundstram. Well played Bash. Top marks to Lendog.

Still in touch. On we go. Pigs lost

 

[JJ Sefton]

Ground one out there, glad to see it, played a lot of good football at times since November for sometimes little reward so we’ve earned one of those.

Excellent decision to bring Lafferty on when we did too toughened the midfield up and saw the last ten out comfortably when we were wobbling.

I was pretty happy with that performance, a 10 minute spell just after their goal apart.

 

[IdLiketoRogerMoore]

Leonard and Lafferty were excellent when they came on, not sure about Donaldson though looked leggy.

Clarke back to his near his best at times tonight as well

JOC Motm for me though class act

Yep. Thought JOC and Stearman were excellent tonight. We're a RCB from having one of the best defences in the League.

 

[Deadly_D'Jaffo]

Ground one out there, glad to see it, played a lot of good football at times since November for sometimes little reward so we’ve earned one of those.

Absolutely spot on.

I didn't walk out the ground too disappointed after the Norwich, Bristol, Pigs and Villa games but frustrated that we didn't get our awards.

I've not seen us dominate Leeds or QPR the way we have done but if this is footballing karma at play then it's completely fair on the players.

 

[Antonb]

Joc was MOM for me too tonight. Thought Lundstrom was average

 

[Large Mendonca]

We should have been 4 or 5 up before they scored against the run of play. We were cruising and in hindsight I think Evans should have taken a yellow for their goal. We never make it easy do we ? Leonard looked decent when he came on and the ref was a tit for not giving us the free kick when he was looking to pull the trigger after that run late on. I can only assume Donaldson injured himself shortly after coming on as he looked lame for his 20 minute cameo. Good to see Leon back to his best tonight.

 

[yorkshirecoast]

We dominated for an hour then fell apart a bit after gifting them a goal by not closing their player down. Taking Duffy off was strange unless he was injured - and similarly not bringing Brooks on was odd unless he wasn’t fully fit.

As always, winning is the most important thing so happy enough. And the pigs lost.

 

[Ranmoorblade]

Leonard and Lafferty were excellent when they came on, not sure about Donaldson though looked leggy.

Clarke back to his near his best at times tonight as well

JOC Motm for me though class act

Donaldson had a nightmare first 5 minutes when he came on, tripping over himself and couldn't control the ball. Did better after that though and held the ball up well.

 

[Ldn_Rd_Blades]

Stearman MOM for me.

I thought we controlled a very tenacious QPR well, they really pressed high and apart from a spell in each half we handled it well. Something we couldn’t do at their place so that shows improvement to me,

I thought the game management for the last 10 minutes after Leonard and lafferty came on was excellent, another thing we’ve got better at.

Their goal was a brilliant individual goal, got to hold your hands up sometimes.

My only complaint is we didn’t have an outlet to exploit how high they we up the pitch

 

[Bladesman]

Ground out a win after what should have been a comfortable match. Gave them all the time in the world to score their goal.

Never the less a win is a win and we got our act together in the final 5 to 10 minutes.

 

[zablade]

We dominated for an hour then fell apart a bit after gifting them a goal by not closing their player down. Taking Duffy off was strange unless he was injured - and similarly not bringing Brooks on was odd unless he wasn’t fully fit.

As always, winning is the most important thing so happy enough. And the pigs lost.

Another five minutes at two nil and Brooks would have been on Wilder had him warming up and was talking to him, then they scored and we started getting over run in midfield so absolutely the right decision to shore things up at 2-1.

 

[biggey blade]

We dominated for an hour then fell apart a bit after gifting them a goal by not closing their player down. Taking Duffy off was strange unless he was injured - and similarly not bringing Brooks on was odd unless he wasn’t fully fit.

As always, winning is the most important thing so happy enough. And the pigs lost.

I don't think bringing Duffy off when we did was a strange decision we was starting to fall under a lot of pressure and brought Leonard on who was fresher and is a bit more defensive than Duffy. Like wise with not bringing brooks on, to be honest think the subs was spot on tonight and think if Leonard had have come on and we had have got hold of the game a little bit then I think brooks would have come on instead of Lafferty late on but as it was and how the game panned out I thought the subs was good.

 

[Esablade]

...don’t think we played well particularly well going forward, Duffy some strangely bad touches for him...and we fell apart at 2-0 up...but hey-go, good 3 points in the end, bit similar to game at their place so maybe put it down to QPR’s approach/shape.

 

[pesch the mini genius]

Special mention for Lafferty, came on got stuck in and generally gave us a bit of bite to see the game out
As said above good sub to do at the the
Felt without fleck we went a bit powder puff esp after they scored

 

[sufcboy95]

Thought Sharp was unlucky to come off, had another decent game, and didn’t look too impressed when he got took off

 

[Carlton Blade]

We were static tonight. Too many times the man on the ball had only one option to pass to. Duffy can't be the only outlet. We really missed Fleck.

Defensively we had two sitting midfielders but the back 3 had mfs running at them. I like them both individually but i don't like Evans and Lundstram together. Too similar and not athletic enough

 

[8lade]

Think our problem was QPR tested the ref to see what they could get away with...turned out it was quite a lot! From then on in Sharp tends to get pushed out of things so he has to come off and every time somebody tried to beat a man somebody just stepped in front of them. Ref proceeded to get worse as the match progressed but fair play to QPR they tried their luck got away with it and then overran us.

 

[Bridge Blade]

We dominated for an hour then fell apart a bit after gifting them a goal by not closing their player down. Taking Duffy off was strange unless he was injured - and similarly not bringing Brooks on was odd unless he wasn’t fully fit.

As always, winning is the most important thing so happy enough. And the pigs lost.

Duffy had an unusual poor game tonight. The game seemed to pass him by and was rightly taken off.

 

[Sheffsteel]

It’s ironic, one of our lease impressive games tonight.
We looked in control but after the goal QPR really went for it and piled on the pressure.
We showed great character and battling qualities.

 

[rosy red]

personally I thought Duffy had his worse game I've seen for ages. In the second half our midfield were sitting deeper and deeper so ball just came straight back after we cleared it. Their centre half dominated everything in second half, we couldn't win anything against him. I personally thought sharp was crap after first 20 mins. Saying that, Sheffield double, I'll take that.

 

[LoughboroBlade]

Another five minutes at two nil and Brooks would have been on Wilder had him warming up and was talking to him, then they scored and we started getting over run in midfield so absolutely the right decision to shore things up at 2-1.

He was due to come on but felt as though he’d tweaked a back muscle so didn’t according to Wilder.

 

[Damski]

It's odd to me that you all seem to think we "won ugly" - Yes, it clearly wasn't a sparkling performance and we won't remember it as a big win, but some of the forward play was really good, a few cutting balls from the middle 3rd found our strikers here and there, some good one touch passing and so on. There was a lot of positivity about us tonight, there were shades of the early season directness that got us to the top of the table.

One thing Wilder/Knill has really tightened up in the squad is the possession and defensive game in midfield. We usually get chopped up in midfield and rely on our back line to do the lion's share of the work, but I've noticed us commanding far more presence in the middle of the park in the past 5 or 6 games, and that is very refreshing. Tonight was one of the first games in ages where I can say we had a bigger presence in midfield than the opponents. It seems that after our mid-season lull, the team is gearing up for a push for the top 6. I don't think we ground it out at all. Well, maybe apart from the last 10 minutes.