Forget Sheffield United's flaws, Ipswich Town win showed the best of the Blades
AT TIMES Sheffield United struggled to pass from A to B, they made sloppy defensive errors and missed good chances to score. Ipswich Town were just as guilty.
The result was a cracking football match, and a performance to be proud of from the Blades, who came out 3-1 winners.
At full-time, no one booed their low passing accuracy or bemoaned the scrappiness. The home fans stayed to praise the fight of a team battling tough circumstances after consecutive defeats.
They remembered the flecks of skill and forgot the misplaced passes that had them groaning at the time.
If perfection is your thing, give football a miss. If you want art, go to a gallery. If naked aggression is all you are interested in, find a bare knuckle fight.
Sheffield United v Ipswich Town had a bit of everything.
"It wasn't a great game, by any means," said Ipswich manager Kieran McKenna afterwards.
He was wrong. It was not technically great, and it was probably not a lot of fun to be on the wrong side of the result, but for anybody watching as a neutral and especially Blades fans, it really was a great game.
The way Callum O'Hare dinked a chip over Christian Walton and Patrick Bamford struck a dropping ball were beautiful. Gustavo Hamer's first-time passes were even better.
O'Hare scored seconds after a double save by Michael Cooper, the first brilliantly reaching George Hirst's shot whilst falling away from it.
But both those goals originated from humps downfield. Andre Brooks' strike was deflected, third time lucky after two Walton saves. The most picturesque bit about it was the summersault celebration.
O'Hare split his head open when Azor Matusiwa pushed him onto the goalkeeper's studs whilst he opened the scoring. Chris Wilder was booked as the middle-aged men on the benches argued like children.
Bamford was cautioned for petulantly kicking an advertising hoarding, then sent off for cheating.
From the moment Tom Davies – on his first start since September – slid into a first-minute tackle, just realising in time if he did not pull out he could get a red card, tackles were near the knuckle.
Sydie Peck nearly started a fight apparently by ruffling Hirst's hair, an enraged Sammi Szmodics forcibly dragged down the tunnel by his team-mates to stop him attacking the Blades midfielder at half-time.
It was unseemly and entertaining.
Minus the suspended Japhet Tanganga and Djibril Soumare, plus the injured Jairo Ridewald, Chiedozie Ogbene, Tyler Bindon and Danny Ings, with Oliver Arblaster and Ki-Jana Hoever not up to speed after injury and a January transfer respectively, with centre-backs Mark McGuinness and Ben Mee struggling with a dislocated shoulder and broken hand, with players on the bench Wilder hopes to sell and only Hoever of the "three or four" signings he wants this month having arrived, the Blades found a way.
They should have trailed inside five minutes but former Leeds United winger Jack Clarke missed a back-post volley and when Sindre Walle Egeli mugged Mee, Cooper made a good low save.
They ought to have scored when Jacob Greaves underhit a 13th-minute backpass, but Dara O'Shea blocked O'Hare's effort. Five minutes later Walton saved from team-mate Cedric Kipre before Hamer.
They might well have gone behind but for Cooper's save from Hirst, then Szmodics, but instead wellied the corner downfield and bundled it to Hamer for the beautiful pass O'Hare finished at the cost of a thickly-bandaged head.
The 38th-minute goal was a fair reflection, but Brooks glossed it when Walton denied Bamford and Femi Seriki only to be beaten by a shot ricocheting off Matuswia.
Good drama needs a twist, and Clarke's penalty – in off the post after McGuinness threw himself and a raised hand in the way of a shot – provided it in the 60th-minute, only for Bamford to settle the nerves.
He wrestled O'Shea to the point where the defender could only tap Cooper's punt to Hamer, who picked out Bamford for a lovely finish.
That should have killed the last half-hour but Bamford kept the pot bubbling by vaulting Walton's outstretched foot from a fair way behind and getting a second yellow card rather than a penalty.
There was pantomime and poetry, gymnastics and jousting, but above all a team giving everything to beat superior opposition. It is what Blades fans pay their money for.
Sheffield United: Cooper; Seriki, McGuinness, Mee, McCallum; Peck, T Davies (Arblaster 63); Brooks (Hoever 87), O'Hare, Hamer (Cannon 72); Bamford. Unused substitutes: Burrows, A Davies, Campbell, Chong, Matos, Sasnauskas.
Ipswich Town: Walton; Furlong, O'Shea, Kipre (Davis 56), Greaves; , Matusiwa, Taylor (Cajuste 71); Walle Egeli (Mehmeti 71), Szmodics (Burns 56), Clarke; Hirst (Azon 56). Unused substitutes: Palmer, Johnson, McAteer, Baggott.
Referee: T Nield (Huddersfield).