At least it was nice while it lasted. I fancy us to lose the next five games to give us a more realistic view of where we will finish.

Oh well, back down to earth with a bang. Thought the team was all wrong today and credit to Utd who were a class above. Not sure us playing well would have made any difference to the result such was the gap in quality. Love to see a really positive reaction against Stoke, the players are better than they showed tonight.

I get the comparison, I don't think it's quite the same though. We were absolutely under the cosh with Pauno and always looked a whisker away from defeat. Boro threw a bit at us but Millwall and Cardiff, from recent memory, didn't actually have a great deal of clear cut chances against us. Under Pauno we were just one good finish from the opposition away from crumbling whereas our previous 3 wins, we never really looked in "that" much danger of getting beat.
I think you may say different in a few months if we fall apart.

Like most others, I'm sure I would. However, the evidence under Ince's time in charge thus far shows we are looking to identify and solve our issues and we do seem to respond to adversity well. If we can keep this bounce-back ability throughout the season, we will be fine.

Positives, we remain 7 points above the bottom 3.

Down to 4th Ince out.

I think you may say different in a few months if we fall apart.

Like most others, I'm sure I would. However, the evidence under Ince's time in charge thus far shows we are looking to identify and solve our issues and we do seem to respond to adversity well. If we can keep this bounce-back ability throughout the season, we will be fine.

Positives, we remain 7 points above the bottom 3.
We still finished 7th that season, so should be good for about 14th at this rate.

4-0 at Huddersfield last season too.

4-0 Forest
4-1 Blackpool
4-0 QPR
3-0 Hull

Jesus. We need to stop capitulating like this in away games

What?

Like most others, I'm sure I would. However, the evidence under Ince's time in charge thus far shows we are looking to identify and solve our issues and we do seem to respond to adversity well. If we can keep this bounce-back ability throughout the season, we will be fine.

Positives, we remain 7 points above the bottom 3.
We still finished 7th that season, so should be good for about 14th at this rate.

Would snap anyone's hand off for that.

Let's see where we are after game 15 or so, hopefully sitting pretty in mid table.

It is, what it is. Sheff U were good, but I don’t think they’ll go up, too many others who are better than them.
Play Fornah and Loum from the start and we’ll be fine on Sunday. I’ll happily drive João to the Hawthorns myself this week from Germany, tell big Ron at the Albion we want 10m for him, he’ll bite your head off

Seriously give it a rest.

Down to 5th, Ince out.

Brum lost though, which is also good news for us.

The season even in August is already depressing. Norwich, Watford, Burnley Sheffield United way better than anyone else with there parachute payments.

Very predictable top 4.

Up in Chesterfield working so I went to this one. Tbh it looked like men against boys. We were outclassed and Sheff United looked very good.

We looked tired/laboured and I think we’ll see similar results to this for the rest of the season. I still feel we’ll have enough to survive though. Hopefully, we can get a result against Stoke.

Only 4 away midweek games to go, thankfully one begins with the letter B, Blackburn.

Do people let you have shoe laces and belts? Because that seems like a risky idea.

I expected 4 straight defeats from those 4 games. So despite tonight which was bound to be tough against a very good side, 9 points is a strong return. Another 10-11 more wins and a handful of draws should get us above the 50 points we'll need.

Good opportunity.to bounce back vs Stoke. We could do with a result as Watford and Sunderland will be tough.

Yes, gets boring every year with same teams up and down. Premiership parachute money just too much which makes it very difficult for any other teams to compete

Yes, gets boring every year with same teams up and down. Premiership parachute money just too much which makes it very difficult for any other teams to compete

Not sure Burnley will be top 6 come the end of the season. Don't think they are consistent enough. Sheff Utd, Norwich and Watford will be top 6 though. Norwich will walk the league now after their rocky start.

Never likely to get anything out of the game tonight, was simply one game too far for us

Don’t think Ince got his tactics right though, said before the game that you have to control their midfield, there aren’t many better midfielders in the Championship than Norwood when you let him dictate the play and that’s exactly what we did today. It’s said almost every time we lost to them but what a waste of a quality player he was, totally misused him here

Also think Joao ahead of Long was a mistake as it was essential to really press up from the front which Long does a better job of doing but ultimately not sure how much of an actual difference that would have made

Yes, gets boring every year with same teams up and down. Premiership parachute money just too much which makes it very difficult for any other teams to compete

Not sure Burnley will be top 6 come the end of the season. Don't think they are consistent enough. Sheff Utd, Norwich and Watford will be top 6 though. Norwich will walk the league now after their rocky start.

And then they’ll struggle in the Prem next year, same pattern between championship and Premier League every year. Even teams that do well initially seem to come back down after 2 or 3 years. Occasional exception as there is to every rule.

Those three had shades of the early run in Clowno's first season. Riding our luck, keeping cleansheets we couldn't maintain longer term.

I get the comparison, I don't think it's quite the same though. We were absolutely under the cosh with Pauno and always looked a whisker away from defeat. Boro threw a bit at us but Millwall and Cardiff, from recent memory, didn't actually have a great deal of clear cut chances against us. Under Pauno we were just one good finish from the opposition away from crumbling whereas our previous 3 wins, we never really looked in "that" much danger of getting beat.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?

I get the comparison, I don't think it's quite the same though. We were absolutely under the cosh with Pauno and always looked a whisker away from defeat. Boro threw a bit at us but Millwall and Cardiff, from recent memory, didn't actually have a great deal of clear cut chances against us. Under Pauno we were just one good finish from the opposition away from crumbling whereas our previous 3 wins, we never really looked in "that" much danger of getting beat.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?
Doesn’t matter. That level of pressure will regularly lead to goals in the long term, and that little possession will struggle to score goals regularly in the long term.

Did Lumley have many saves to make against Sheffield? He made 3 total, at least one if not more were just routine.

This, was optimistic on the build up of a good battle. Saw the team sheet and in my mind didn't make sense. But ultimately wouldn't have made a huge difference who we started.
We were chasing shadows from the off. A lot of players purely out shone by a very good and a very organised Sheff utd team. Best team we have played in a long time.
We looked exactly how Blackburn looked versus us.

It is what it is.

We just didn't get going and gave them far too much respect. As the first half went on, the pressing kicked in a little bit and produced a couple of half chances which we just didn't look like capitalising on.

The second killed us and then it was realistically damage limitation.

We simply aren't competing with the likes of Sheffield United this year, so any points we get from these games would be an absolute bonus.

Shows we need at least a couple of more bodies in who can allow us to freshen up a little. Sheffield were able to make a couple of changes from the game at Luton and still look strong - we are pretty much having to play the same side each week. No wonder the energy levels looked different.

Whilst we were totally outclassed first half, we went in at the break growing into the game still firmly in it and knowing we could carve out chances.

That early goal second half, with Fornah beaten at a defensive set piece in about his first involvement in the game killed it though.

If we are alert at the start of that half and can hold out for 10 minutes or so, it's easily a different game we could snatch an undeserved point from.

Once we let Sheff get their dander up again, we were buried.

Ince got it wrong, McIntyre can't manage a midfield slot in that sort of game and we disrupted our well balanced midfield for him. Loum wasn't prepared for that level of quality in the Championship, and Hendrick just isn't really up to that level of quality.

Once again we started too deep and got punished. Our best phases were when we pushed higher to press. Lots of niggly fouls before they got in our half to disrupt them and break their rhythm was the way to go. Too often they just ran past our players and too often they were doing it too deep in our half to risk giving away freekicks.

We worked hard, gave it a go and got some chances, sadly we snatched at them.

Better team won and did a number on us. We won't play many teams that good at this level.

Can't argue with any of that. Felt we were starting to get a toehold toward the end of the half and having got lucky by only being 1 down, there were signs that if we could stay tight, we would create something or get a chance from a set play. But 90 seconds after half-time, done - move on, focus on Stoke and hopefully have another couple of bodies available for that as well.

Bar the Lumley save when 3-0 up against Blackburn did he make an actual save beyond the absolute routine in any of those games?
Doesn’t matter. That level of pressure will regularly lead to goals in the long term, and that little possession will struggle to score goals regularly in the long term.

Did Lumley have many saves to make against Sheffield? He made 3 total, at least one if not more were just routine.

That's a fair point about possession, generally the teams that have more of the ball win more games than those that don't, obviously not the case in all scenario's though. But, as Stam proved, just "having the ball" can be seen as important because it means the opposition doesn't have it and therefore can't score. When we used to have 80% of the ball under Stam, that's essentially saying to the opposition that they have about 12-15 minutes in possession to score a goal, whereas we have 45+ minutes to score a goal (accounting for about a third of the game is taken up by set pieces, which we'd have the lions share of as we used to have most of the ball).

I think the way we play, possession we have etc is just a case of where we are as a team and a club. A bottom of the table second tier side, looking to be tough to play against, difficult to beat and scrapping for as many wins and points as we can get. If we can have sort of 22 points by game 15, I'll be pleased.

I was at the game and this a very good summary.

I travelled back to Chesterfield with a couple of Sheffield Utd fans who thought we were the worst team they’d seen at Bramall Lane for ages. I reminded them about last April and the fact that we’re down to our bare bones. It was all good banter and tbf although they were aware of our predicament they hadn’t realised how bad things had been.