QPR 1:1 Sheffield United
Blimey. It’s hard work understanding matches like this one. It was dull and devoid of any real quality and it’s not often I say that about any game I see.
Sometimes it can be hard to put your finger on why the game can evolve and pan out in such an uninspired fashion, but if you look closely enough, there’s a reason for everything.
That reason was Sheffield United. On paper the Blades have a strong squad. It’s filled with Premiership experienced players and with the names they’ve got, they really should be challenging at the top end of the table.
United though play such a horrible percentage based game. Their style can strangle the life and soul out of matches and they certainly achieved that with their approach here.
Perhaps that’s the idea behind the way they play, but it’s also counter productive for their own ambitions. I was amazed, because surely they’ve got the players to take more risks and open up games in their favour? It’s no surprise they’re mid-table if they’re choosing to approach games the way they did against us.
So, let’s actually talk about the football. Both teams had enough attacking players on the pitch to have two strikers up top apiece, but in actual fact, we both shaped into 4-5-1 formations for long periods.
Vine seemed to drift into midfield positions, but at times, I couldn’t work out where he was supposed to be. Sometimes he dropped into the hole, but sometimes he went out to the right. When he did the latter, he got in Hogan’s way a lot and that meant he seemed to go further backwards but in a weird in-between position.
This didn’t help with space and left both teams with little time on the ball in key areas, sometimes due to congestion, sometimes due to the proximity of players around which mean passes were hurried or the players themselves were hurried into passing. It was difficult for either team to string any sort of passing momentum together and as a result the entire match was a low quality affair.
We got to grips with this better than they did in the first-half though and at times we managed some lovely passing moves which appeared to come out of no-where. Some of the play was nice, but it was in very small patches and eventually we scored with one of these from a well worked move. Angelo Balanta notched his first goal as a professional and it was nice to see him coming inside off the left flank to get it.
Sheffield United on the other hand were happy all game to hook the ball into the channels. Their percentage based play left me open-mouthed at times. Once or twice they had great opportunities to slot players in and look dangerous, but more often than not they just hoofed the ball way beyond their front men and conceded possession in the process.
In the end, you were hoping for a little bit of inspiration. This is when you need someone with a touch of quality of flair to unlock the door. We’ve got plenty of players who are capable, but none of them really played very well today.
Patrick Agyemang’s touch wasn’t with him, Rowan Vine was sloppy or not choosing his passes well enough and Hogan Ephraim really never got the ball any time he wanted it. Martin Rowlands was the only person who played well and it says a lot that Damien Delaney made more forward runs than anyone else in the side.
It was hard though when United played with a rigid base. On one of their own attacking corners, they left four men back marking Pat on his own and they were obviously clued up about not letting him run in behind them.
Mikele Leigertwood was also somewhat anonymous in the middle and barely got involved or on the ball too and that was that really. It just didn’t happen for us going forward. Defensively we did okay and the guys dealt with the threats well enough, but they all distributed poorly going forward too.
So, there you have it. It was just one of those games. We’ve got another point on the board and we’ll take that here. A positive out of this was Dexter looked in good spirits in the warm-up, playfully fighting with Fitz Hall and he also looked energetic when he came on too.
I still don’t really understand why we’re not using Kieran Lee a little bit more. It would have great to have seen him on the pitch as his composure and technical skills may have been what we were looking for. We just needed someone to put their foot on the ball and take some control or build up some pressure and he may have been able to help with that.
