When Sheffield United lost the playoff final against Sunderland last season, a series of events were kickstarted that have led us to where we are today with Saints visiting Bramall Lane.

Firstly, Sheffield United‘s new owners decided that 93 points and a narrow playoff final defeat was not enough and they wanted to bring in their own man as manager, so Chris Wilder was sacked. Meanwhile, over in Humberside, another sacking had taken place where Ruben Selles had taken a bad Hull team and made them worse, but they stayed in the Championship by finishing fourth from bottom. The Hull board thought Ruben wasn’t good enough but meanwhile, over in Sheffield, for some inexplicable reason, the new ownership of Sheffield United looked at Ruben Selles and his CV and saw a relegation with Southampton, a relegation with Reading and a seat of the pants survival on the last day with Hull, and thought that he was the man to take over. I guess his CV also featured his dress sense and smile. Yes, Ruben‘s agent is truly a remarkable man but the warning to any other club chairmen is that you can’t polish a turd, you can only roll it in glitter.

Fast forward five games into the new season and five defeats for Sheffield United meant that they saw the error of their ways and decided to make Ruben’s agent great again and go back to the future and employ Chris Wilder again. Wilder is of course Sheffield United born and bred because if he wasn’t, he would doubtless have told them to fuck off and counted the money from his payoff for a while. As it is though, he is starting his third stint as their manager and won his first game of this tenure last week, away at Oxford. When the fixture list came out, I thought that playing Sheffield United eight games in would be a good thing because Ruben would be in charge but of course, he didn’t last that long and today’s assignment as a result, is immeasurably more difficult?

It gets lost in the mists of time a bit, just how useless Ruben was. Yes you can point at us already being virtually down after Nathan Jones but Ruben made sure. Avoiding relegation was still very possible that season. I’ll always remember West Ham away when he’d had two weeks to think about a team for a must win game and he came up with Mara and Walcott up front “because they could defend”. He had to win about four of our last ten to give us a chance and he fell short by four. A good effort from the man who famously said he wanted to be our manager for ten years.

Moving on… the very recent Saints improvement this season, started with the Liverpool cup game and continued into the league with Middlesbrough on Saturday. With performances improving, it is now time for results to do the same. The main issue of course is sticking the ball in the net and as our main striker on Saturday, is Ross Stewart fit enough to start two games in four days? There was certainly no one on Saturday who deserves to get left out for performance reasons, so unless Stewart can’t handle the workload, I would expect the same team.

Sheffield United of course still have the main spine of their team that nearly got promoted last season. Gus Hamer is a player to watch out for in midfield and probably on the bench, they are going to have a certain Danny Ings, fresh from his four year tour around Premier League benches since he left Saints. We have been trying and mainly failing to replace his goal output ever since.

So, The Selles Derby. Maybe both teams could warm up wearing polo necks and generally being fucking useless and stealing a living. Anyway, team news and no changes for Saints and no change to the warm-up tops. Ruben has left the building.

Saints start pretty well and build down the left before it’s worked inside for Azaz and he has a pop from 25 yards but it keep on rising a yard or so over the bar.

Ross Stewart is playing his second game in four days after all his injury issues but he seems lively enough as he chases down a back pass, closes down Cooper in goal and tackles him but Cooper drops on the loose ball.

The Blades seem pretty blunt so far, a bit like whatever scissors were used on Tom Davies ridiculous barnet but Jander and Arma don’t communicate to the effect that Jander gives the ball away in midfield. Hamer picks it up and finds Campbell on our left and he gets into the area and literally walks past Quarshie, who makes a token effort to tackle with the wrong foot, and smashes it into the roof of the net giving McCarthy no chance at all. Shit. Another goal the opposition didn’t have to work that hard for.

There’s been this narrative ever since Will Still came to the club that he wanted to get crosses into the box and that was all well and good, apart from the fact that we had no one who could really cross the ball and even if we did, we didn’t have a centre forward to head the ball anyway. Fellows down the right again and cutting inside onto his left foot and delivering to where Stewart gets in front of the defender and a flicked header down towards the far bottom corner. All brilliant but the keeper hadn’t read the memo and gets down well to save. Bastard,

We’ve come to life a bit now an Arma has a shot blocked from a narrow angle and we recycle it to Jander, who skips past one, gets to the line and stands it up to the back post and Stewart rises and heads down to the opposite corner and Cooper drops on it right on the line. Stewart appeals optimistically that it was over the line but to be fair, goal line tech wasn’t invented when Ross was last playing.

Saints have been the better side, controlling possession but there’s been too much sideways and backwards. With half-time approaching we are jolted in action with a long ball from Manning, which is brilliantly brought down on the run by Stewart and he touches it round Cooper who trashes him over. Given. Sheffield United are arguing about whether it’s a penalty when it 100% is. Keeper hasn’t got the ball and taken out the player in full flight. Anyway, up steps Adam Armstrong and I am waiting for the net to bulge as normal and…. he absolutely fucking balloons it. Fucking hell….. maybe there’s something in not letting a player who has had an shocking 45 minutes taking a penalty.

As the players leave the pitch at halftime, despite getting away with the penalty, Chris Wilder is still angry about something and takes a boot at a stray ball on his way off the pitch and smashes it into the crowd where it hits someone and after he’s apologised to the old boy he hit, he gets a red card for his trouble. Dickhead.

Overall this first half has been mainly like a bad Russell Martin performance with it all going sideways and backwards and very rarely going forwards, combined with conceding a shit goal. What I don’t understand is that when we do play it forwards we caused them problems. Sometimes you just have to put a ball into an area and compete for it.There’s been a few positives in this first half in Ross Stewart, Nathan Wood and Tom Fellows.

Second half and Will Still is again getting brave at halftime with £20 million worth of new players in Fellows and Azaz being substituted for Wee Man and Jay Robinson. I’m a bit mystified as to why Fellows is going off as he’s been one of our better players, but “In Will We Trust,” I guess.

We start the second half in particularly dozy fashion with Charles giving away a free kick and getting booked. Manning is totally asleep from a quick free kick which gives O’Hare a clear shot at McCarthy but he spreads himself to make a brilliant save.

That save becomes particular invaluable five minutes later as we win a corner on the left. In it comes from Manning and up goes at Armstrong at the near post and and he flicks it over the keeper and and it bounces off the top of the bar and back into play and Ross Stewart reacts to calmly slide it into the net from 6 yards out. Fucking hell. We’ve scored. Never in doubt etc.

With no manager to speak of on the sideline, the Blades look a bit rattled and Stewart picks it up again on the left win and heads infield, lends to ball to Robbo and gets it back and he’s clearly going to shoot and Stewart pings a 25 yarder into the top corner. Fucking brilliant goal. We are so fucking back, baby!

No we’re not, as it’s now time the manage the game and we have a choice of pushing for a killer third goal or sitting back. To no Saints fans surprise, we choose to sit back. The Blades of course start to get a bit more adventurous and we begint o look all panicky. Manning is trying to get a second yellow and Josh Q is having a mare, not going for headers, missing one’s he goes for. Still gets Manning off the pitch by bringing on Roerslev and moving Wee Man to left back and Flynn Downes is on for Arma, with Jander moving up on the right. Whoever is the Blades manager now brings on Danny Ings and his arthritic knees.

The Blades get through on our left through Ogbene, with Josh Q slow off the mark but in pursuit and the big man blatantly shoves him in the back on the edge of the box. Clear foul but not given. I am totally a loss as to why Josh has been left on the pitch to be honest because his head has obviously completely gone.

More horrendous game management in as Edwards has the choice of trying to shepherd a ball out for a corner under pressure from Ings and his knees, or smashing it up the pitch. He chooses the former and, with crushing inevitability, it hits his foot on the way out. A corner comes in, Macca misses it, Josh Q stands transfixed, and behind him, Peck knocks it in… for fuck’s sake. The ref has blown though, thank fuck. Foul on the keeper, and the replay shows a clear bear hug by Cannon on Macca. Much complaining from United and much relief for Ronnie and Josh in particular. Peck’s celebration was to go and kick the corner flag to bits, so we wait a while to get a new flag, and we end up with 10 minutes extra.

Into extra time and Josh Q misses another ball and Woody has to cover round behind him and give a free kick away right on the edge of the box. For reasons unknown, the referee can only count to 8 instead of 10 yards, which makes Hamer’s decision to chip it from too close in all the more surprising and it goes over, watched by the draught-excluding Wee Man on the floor behind the wall. Hamer should have taken a leaf out of his managers book and just smashed it. The end – we got there.

Well that last half an hour was absolute purgatory but is there any wonder that we don’t really know how to see a game out bearing in mind we haven’t done it in a league game for about two years?. It sure as hell wasn’t pretty, but we got the job done. Three points means more confidence and three points means they know what they have to do to go and get another three points and maybe next time we see out the rest of the game better. Football is about getting over the line and we did that. We didn’t play as well as we did at times on Saturday, but we got two more points than we got on Saturday.

We almost got there today despite ourselves. Giving away another shit goal, missing a penalty of our own, needing our goalkeeper to keep us in the game at the start of the second half and then that horrible half an hour when we seemed hell bent on giving Sheffield United every possible chance of equalising. Let’s be honest, they were absolute shit. They had hard work and physicality but that was it. We are on the other hand, missed headers, gave away stupid free kicks, gave the ball away cheaply and just invited a massive amount of pressure and made things much more difficult than they should have been but we got away with it, which today, is all that matters.

The referee is going to be getting a lot of shit for this game and he infuriated me with some of the free kicks he gave in the middle of the pitch, usually for next to nothing but when you look at the big calls in the game, he got them all right. It was 100% a penalty for the foul on Ross Stewart because he’s got nowhere to go and the goalkeeper has slid into him. If you don’t think that’s a penalty, even if you’re a Sheffield United fan, then you honestly need your head checking. Chris Wilder got a red card for booting a ball into the crowd which hit a spectator. It’s a red card and you can’t argue about it and as for disallowed goal at the end, well Tom Cannon has got two arms around the goalkeeper and is stopping him from jumping, so that’s a good spot from the referee. The worst decision he made was the foul he didn’t give against Quarshie for a barge in the back on Ogbene. Wilder had a pop afterwards of course and will no doubt store it all up to try and get some sort of siege mentality going which helps them beat the near £500,000 of fines they got last year. I’d love to hear him explain how it wasn’t a penalty on Stewart and how it wasn’t a bear hug on McCarthy. Dickhead.

Our first half performance was not without chances but still a bit ropey. It was back to the Hull game for being pedestrian and not doing anything right in either penalty area. The goal was absolutely gift wrapped to the Blades as we had the ball and Jander gave it away on the halfway line, but there was still no real danger, but the way that Campbell just walked around Josh Q was embarrassing. He went to tackle him with his wrong foot and stood there rather than trying to shepherd him out of play. Sunday league defending. It affected Josh in the second half as well because he basically didn’t put a foot right For the entire 50 odd minutes. It was a relapse back to the start of the season when he didn’t win a header, didn’t win a tackle and was never in the right place and made wrong decisions all over the place. He played well against Liverpool and Boro but this was a definite ‘relapse’come out of the team for a couple of weeks’ performance.

Thank heavens for Nathan Wood who once again was brilliant in his reading of the game and clearing up when others fucked up. Ronnie Edwards was also solid until he had an absolute brain fart in the last minute and tried to let that ball run out for a corner. That brain fart lead to the disallowed goal so Ronnie got extremely lucky there.

Once we got the two goals, we really needed to push on for a third because they were there for the taking but we didn’t do it and we didn’t control possession either and the game just became a shitshow which was the best possible way for Shefford United to try and get back into it.

Will Still again gets top marks for bravery with his substitutions of Azaz and Fellows at halftime. Wee Man played right wing back and then left wing back because still had to take Ryan Manning off because a) he was having an absolute shocker and b) he looked like he was trying to get himself sent off every time he went in for a challenge.

The outstanding positive of the day is that we have found our number nine. I always thought Ross Stewart was the most likely to fit the role of lone central striker but he was the last to be given a chance and admittedly, his substitute performances have not been very good but today he was excellent. It’s just one game of course but he managed tackling the keeper, two decent headers that brought good saves out of the keeper and getting brought down for a penalty and then two goals in the second half. We’re not had a striker getting involved in that many goalmouth incidents in a game for years. The second goal is going to be a goal of the season contender and the way he picked the ball up, played the 1-2 with Robinson and it’s such a clean strike into the top corner. Absolutely brilliant, please stay fit.

I thought with these two away games coming up that we needed four points from Sheffield United and Derby on the road. Having got three today we absolutely have to go to Derby and win. Get those three points on Saturday and the old EIEIEIO chant will be coming out again.

Up the fucking Saints.