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Tuesday 17th October. Following yesterday’s dismissal of Steve Bruce, caretaker manager Lou Macari has revealed that he only took the job with Steve Bruce’s blessing. This is a strange revelation but perhaps it’s just a euphemism for Bruce chucking his office keys at Macari and saying “There you go Lou, help yourself it’s all yours”. I can’t understand why they have got rid of Steve Bruce without also giving John Deehan his cards as well as I feel that many of Town’s problems have come from the training ground and this is the domain of Mr Deehan. Perhaps they are waiting to see who the new manager brings with him before deciding who else gets the chop. Meanwhile despite the behind the scenes activity, the fixture list seems to provide no respite and there is an early opportunity for Lou Macari to show his credentials as prospective manager with a visit to Bramall Lane against Sheffield United. Under the terms of Rob Kozluk's loan agreement he had to sit this one out so team changes were inevitable. Adopting a 3-5-2 formation, Town played with 3 centre backs Lucketti, Armstrong and Dyson with Jenkins and Vincent occupying the wing-back berths presumably to try to ensure that things were kept tight at the back. The first half sounded to be a fairly low-key affair as I switched between the commentaries provided by Radio Leeds Leeds Leeds and Home 107.9 (mainly the former as I am superstitious and haven’t heard Town win listening to Home FM). The majority of the play seemed to belong to the home side but they failed to create anything to really test Nico Vaesen as the 5-man Town back line held firm. We created one or two openings the best of which fell to Martin Smith in the 18th minute when he narrowly failed to connect with Gallen’s cross and Chris Beech tried his luck in the 43rd minute but his header was wayward and failed to trouble Simon Tracey. The longer the game went on the more likely a shut out looked to be on the cards as the interval approached, and the fourth official indicated 2 minutes of stoppage time. Town’s biggest failing this season has been their lack of concentration as the kettle is boiling for the interval cuppa, and once again it proved to be their downfall. Having already clattered the crossbar through Lee Sandford after 35 minutes, former Tranmere striker David Kelly changed the half time team talk converting Michael Brown’s cross with a powerful header from close range with just 12 seconds to go before the half time whistle. A 0-0 scoreline at half time might have given the caretaker manager something to build on in the second period but once again sloppy defending meant that we had to try to chase the game, and with our recent scoring record it is not something we are not very adept at doing. Steve Jenkins sounded to play well in his first senior game back from injury, but his efforts all came to nothing as once again Town lacked punch up front. The second half began with an early chance for Jon Dyson who was still in an attacking position from an earlier move but the defender hooked a shot wide from Kevin Gallen’s header into the middle. This was the last that was seen of Town as an offensive force and the balance of play returned to the Blades who then scored an almost inevitable second goal in the 63rd minute. Once again the defence was found wanting as they gave Paul Devlin far too much space to pass to David Kelly who returned the compliment and Devlin smashed a shot home from 15 yards out. The game had now slipped beyond Town’s reach with the second goal, and a double substitution of Baldry and Sellars for Jenkins and Holland did little to stem the tide. Sheffield United were completely in control at this stage of the game and a third goal followed ten minutes later with David Kelly bursting past the now injured Jon Dyson to shoot across Nico Vaesen and into the far corner of the net. Macari finally woke up to the fact that Dyson was unable to continue in the 76th minute when he brought Kevin Gray into the defence but it was clear by this stage that yet another 3 points would elude us. The biggest worry was how many more goals we would concede before the final whistle blew as they pushed forward in the vein hope of reducing the arrears and Marcus Bent could have punished us further in the final minute but lost control of his attempted through ball and no further addition was made to the scoreline. Typical of a Neil Warnock side, Sheffield United were more physical and bullied Town into submission, and it’s about time we started to become more aggressive in our quest for survival. Lou Macari has got his work cut out to lift a team that looks destined to be playing division 2 football next season. Only Sheffield Wednesday’s ineptitude is keeping us off the bottom of the table at the moment, but teams above a picking up the odd point here and there and the gap is ominously starting to grow. Although it is only a couple of points at the moment, current form suggests that it might take more than 1 game for us to achieve a position of safety.
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All words and thoughts by Chris except where stated.
A big thank you to Machala for putting up with me doing this and Ian for his support and my Mum for her proof reading.
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