Chris Wilder's "tough" admission as Sheffield United's victory over Plymouth Argyle sums up Championship
Chris Wilder's "tough" admission as Sheffield United's victory over Plymouth Argyle sums up life in Championship
Honest Chris Wilder admitted Sheffield United’s victory over Plymouth Argyle was a “tough watch” after taking responsibility for not making more changes for the Blades’ third game in the six games. The Blades beat Plymouth 2-0 to extend their lead at the top of the Championship to three points, but they were far from convincing in doing so for large parts.
Good teams get results when others perhaps wouldn’t, however, and United had to dig deep in a different sort of way as they struggled to gain control of a game that the watching world would have expected them to win comfortably. They failed to build on Gus Hamer’s first-half strike until two minutes from time, when sub Kieffer Moore dispatched from the penalty spot after Tom Davies had been fouled.
United looked every inch a side who had played on Wednesday night and only returned to Sheffield in the early hours of Thursday morning, and Wilder admitted: "It was a tough watch for myself, the coaches and the supporters. I think it sums Championship football up in a nutshell. We'd all be very rich if we could predict every result in this division and every performance.
"They were the better side in the first half, without a shadow of doubt. I blame myself, maybe we should have made some more changes and freshened it up, but I wanted that team to go again. So that’s a learning curve for a 57-year-old manager. I think it shows you when we miss a couple of players it really does stretch us and then we've got Kieffer coming on, who really should have another week-and-a-half of training under his belt, Tom Davies, we should be easing back into first-team football.
"It’s a ridiculous schedule, to play Sunday afternoon away, Wednesday night in London, come back early and play Saturday. We're getting punished for winning games of football. I don't think that was right and it stretched some of our younger boys because that's the first time the young boys will have played three games in six days at the top end of the Championship. So it's a good result for us. Really good, because they were better.”
Wilder and his coaching staff changed United’s shape and approach at half-time, with Argyle getting some joy through Brendan Galloway in midfield and Adam Randell also influential for Wayne Rooney’s side.
"Our quality wasn't very good,” Wilder added. “But we're here to try and help the players as coaches and managers to make it a little bit easier so going man for man and jumping on their six, I think we made it a little bit more difficult for them to get out and break our press.
"We were better second half. I'm not saying we created clear-cut chances and it should have been two, three and four, but we felt a lot more comfortable but not safe until we got the penalty. I've been in it long enough, and that's Championship football to a tee.”