There have been low points this season but we surely hit a new one yesterday when humiliation prevailed at Bramall Lane with a four goal victory for our hosts on an afternoon when it could easily have been much more.<\/p>\n
From being two goals down within the first seventeen minutes through to several attempts to commit defensive suicide at various stages of this game this was an afternoon where there simply were not positives to be taken and – at this stage of the season – that becomes more and more of a worry.<\/p>\n
So as we look back the day after the game, what key five things do we take (learn?) from the defeat and take into the difficult challenges ahead.<\/p>\n
1. Andy Fisher, time to swap back?\u00a0<\/strong>– I don’t for one minute believe that Andy Fisher is a bad goalkeeper but he is certainly doing his best to make himself look like one.\u00a0 \u00a0Poor passing around his area, potentially poor positioning and exposed by a defence that simply cannot protect him.\u00a0 \u00a0For his own good it feels like he needs taking out of the firing line but we have to ask questions why we spent the money on him we did, the pain doubled when we hear of the strong performances Steven Benda is putting in elsewhere.<\/p>\n 2. Playing it out from the back is continuing to be our downfall –\u00a0<\/strong>If it wasn’t for the fact that Sheffield United were wasteful with the golden chances we presented them yesterday would have been much worse.\u00a0 \u00a0I get that Russell Martin wants his sides to play out from the back but he keeps talking about it being “brave” but it is starting to feel more like stupid.\u00a0 The opposition see it, they press us high and we make mistakes – every fan can see that so the manager surely has to change it?<\/p>\n 3. We have a Plan A and that is about it –\u00a0<\/strong>We have suggested before that we have a Plan B but the longer the season goes on the more we seem to stick rigidly to Plan A.\u00a0 \u00a0It can work sometimes but away from home it feels like it is being exposed more often.\u00a0 The ease at which the home side cut through the defence yesterday was embarrassing to see and that is back to the fault of the manager’s inability to change things to adapt certain situations.<\/p>\n 4.\u00a0 We keep making the same mistakes – <\/strong>It gets a bit galling to hear the same reasons being given for defeat.\u00a0 Sloppy mistakes, lack of intensity, starting slowly, making mistakes, be better next\u00a0 game are all reasons that we hear but we hear them after every defeat and they are becoming more frequent.\u00a0 Every team makes mistakes, every team loses games but we need to learn from both experiences and right now it doesn’t feel that we are.<\/p>\n 5. A season of transition or a season of regression?\u00a0\u00a0<\/strong>We all accepted this season was one of transition but right now it feels like one of regression.\u00a0 In October the signs felt more positive that we were moving in the right direction but right now it doesn’t feel we are anywhere near that.\u00a0 We have picked up 11 points from the last 12 games, losing 7 of them in the process.\u00a0 9 goals for, 20 against in that same period.\u00a0 That is not a team in transition that is a team regressing too quickly for any of our liking.\u00a0 We need to halt that run but with Bournemouth, Coventry and Fulham at home and West Brom away as our next four games does anyone fancy our chances?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There have been low points this season but we surely hit a new one yesterday when humiliation prevailed at Bramall Lane with a four goal victory for our hosts on an afternoon when it could easily have been much more. From being two goals down within the first seventeen minutes through to several attempts to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[293,49,203],"tags":[714,636,775,608],"class_list":["post-55597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-first-team","category-news","category-opinion","tag-andy-fisher","tag-russell-martin","tag-sheffield-united-4-swansea-city-0-19th-february-2022-efl-championship","tag-the-2021-22-season"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55597","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=55597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55597\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=55597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=55597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jackarmy.net\/wp67\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=55597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}