Sheffield United 0 Forest 0 – Wilson sees red in an otherwise impressive display

By: Tim | April 14th, 2009

Wilson sees red... Considering the Blades were the form team in the Championship going in to yesterday’s game, having won their last five matches, and that we played with 10 men for seventy-five minutes, I think this was an impressive display by the Reds.

Breckin marshalled the backline very well after Wilson’s straight red card for head butting Greg Halford (looking at the incident again he did push his head towards him, Halford made the most out of it though), strange as it may sound his sending off galvanised the team, in terms of defending anyway. It limited our attacking options of course, a fact that Davies acknowledged when he took Blackstock and Garner off relatively early, but the point was hard-earned, helped along by the Blades’s sketchy and hurried attacking play. Highlights are available here.

Davies was presumably so exhausted by the days events that he sent Ned Kelly out to do the post-match interview: “You have to work harder than the opposition, to get in their faces and close the ball down; to stop crosses and shots. Kelvin going off was a big loss for us, but it shows the character of everyone else that they were able to get him out of a mess by fighting for that result. Now we have to concentrate on making sure we do the right things against Coventry”.

Kelly is right, it was a good result, although it was slightly softened by the fact that Norwich won at home to Watford. Of all their remaining games that was the one I had earmarked for a Norwich win, we’re now level on points with both Barnsley and Norwich but remain in the relegation zone due to our poor goal difference. On paper, even though Barnsley have a game in hand, you’d have to say that they have the toughest run-in – their one remaining home game is against Wolves, although they may have already secured automatic promotion by then and could be tempted to field a weaker side.

Norwich have got Ipswich and Reading coming up, and end their campaign against Charlton at the Valley. Norwich seem to be battling as hard as we are, my instinct says they’ll do enough to stay up, but hey, as Greavsie famously said, it’s a funny old game.

As Kelly said, though, we need to concentrate on our games – we’ve got Coventry at home this Saturday, no doubt Wilson will be absent due to suspension, although if Breckin can repeat yesterday’s performance we shouldn’t miss him too much. Moussi was rested against the Blades, but should be make it back, likewise for Joel Lynch. Earnshaw and Turner are battling to be fit, and could be back before the end of the season, although they won’t make it back for this match. With Garner and Blackstock up front I’m sure we’ve got goals, however, and they always come in handy when you’re trying to win games.