Big moments leave Sheffield United wondering what could have been again at Wembley after boss's "leader" point
Big moments leave Sheffield United wondering what could have been again at Wembley
A season of fine margins for Sheffield United came down to the finest of them all - and the Blades found themselves on the wrong side of them as their Premier League dream went up in smoke under the Wembley arch yesterday. United, so comfortably the third-best team in the Championship this season, will face its rigours again next term, while victorious Sunderland ride the wave of promotion.
It all began so brightly for the Blades, who came out of the traps quickly with an intensity that gave hope to those tens of thousands massed behind Michael Cooper’s goal that this could, finally, be the year. It was 100 years since United’s last Wembley win and as United set about Sunderland, going ahead through Tyrese Campbell, that record’s days felt numbered.
More so when Harrison Burrows, no stranger to finding the net at Wembley, did so again with a sweetly-struck effort after a corner had only been half-cleared into his path. For a minute or so Unitedites were in dreamland. Two-nil up in a play-off final? That just didn’t happen to them. They turned out to be right; a VAR check confirmed what they all feared, the goal chalked off.
It may have been the correct call, depending on your interpretation of whether Vini Souza did put off Anthony Patterson from an offside position as the ball flew past the Sunderland goalkeeper, but it raised a wider point about the use of the re-refereeing technology in the final.
In United’s 51 other games this season - 46 in the league, two in play-offs and three in the other cups - that goal would have stood. In the biggest of them all, it didn’t. To United it felt like an injustice; to Sunderland, the right decision made and a moment which gave them a shot in the arm to show some more attacking endeavour towards the end of the first half.
Even then, it took 50 minutes before Michael Cooper was called into action, the United goalkeeper having watched from the other end of Wembley as his opposite number Patterson denied Kieffer Moore’s header with a fine save inside the first couple of minutes.
The Blades weren’t to be denied and broke the deadlock 25 minutes in, when Gus Hamer showed the perfect blend of industry and invention to put the ball on a plate for Tyrese Campbell. He still had to finish it, and how he did; a lovely chipped finish over Patterson to send one side of Wembley wild.
It was no less than United deserved and it seemed to calm a few nerves, while also quietening a Sunderland support in fine voice up to that point. Burrows’ goal, and the subsequent reversal, gave them something to cheer out; after the restart, United couldn’t wrestle back the momentum they had built up in the first half.
But then came what could, and should, have been their big moment; a slip from Dennis Cirkin, letting in the Blades sub Andre Brooks. He took a touch, and Patterson made a big save; Brooks followed up, and Dan Ballard made a big block.
It felt huge at the time - even if replays suggested the ball had hit Brooks’ hand, meaning it may not have stood had it gone in - and proved so not long after when Sunderland found some of their attacking groove, United made some poor decisions and Eliezer Mayenda smashed into the roof of Cooper’s net to give Sunderland fans renewed hope just when it felt like it was running out.
Rangy striker Moore also had a good opening, sent clear by the industrious Sydie Peck, but he dallied too long on his shot and it was blocked. He then inadvertently played a part in the game’s decisive moment, with a loose pass up top halting a promising United attack and starting a Sunderland one in one fell swoop.
Sunderland sub Tommy Watson, who caused the Blades such problems at Bramall Lane earlier in the season before agreeing a summer move to Brighton and Hove Albion, accepted the gift, although he still had a lot to do. Given the freedom of Brent to advance on Cooper’s goal, and with United defender Anel Ahmedhodzic off the pitch and dazed after a clash of heads with teammate Tom Cannon, Watson found a finish right into the bottom corner of the United net.
Big moments leave Sheffield United wondering what could have been
Cue pandemonium at one end, an outpouring of grief and frustration at the other. United rarely killed teams off completely during the regular league season, until bucking the trend in both legs of their semi-final rout of Bristol City, and that came back to haunt them on the grandest stage of all.
"You've got to put teams to bed, and you've got to be clinical,” said Blades boss Chris Wilder. “And you've got to be tidy and you've got to be smarter. We weren't smart in terms of our organisation on the second goal. You're into the 97th minute of a game and we're sort of strung across the middle of the park.
"The boy finds an enormous amount of space to counter and break on us. You’ve got to sit in as a 4-4-1 or sitting as a 4-5(-0), really, and see that final 30 seconds or a minute out. Because Anel was potentially coming back on. We didn't really want to make a decision on Anel because of the importance of substitutes in extra-time.
“We would have had the ability to bring another one on and I think that would have been a crucial point. But to lose it in that manner really stings. Whether it's lack of experience or a bit of leadership needed to go: ‘We just see the game out.’ But that wasn't to be, and they find a fabulous winner.”
And the Blades, once again, left Wembley ruing what could have been.