Ruben Selles' duff hands stops Sheffield United making most of their aces – the final word
When Sheffield United were scintillating, between the 14th and 26th minutes of their game against Bristol City, Callum O'Hare and Gustavo Hamer were outstanding.
Winning the ball high up the field and threading beautiful passes, they were central to a brilliant advertisement for Ruben Selles football.
But team sport is about balance, and over 90 minutes the home side were so bad they were booed off at full-time, beaten 4-1.
O'Hare and Hamer – or rather their roles – were the main reasons.
It is a circle manager Selles must square quickly. The Blades need promotion before their Premier League trampoline – sorry, parachute – payment is taken away next summer.
September 1's transfer deadline is more pressing. The players this squad badly needs may be less keen to come if they fear Selles is the new Slavisa Jokanovic. If/when attractive offers come in for them, Hamer, Tyrese Campbell and Michael Cooper might need persuading to stay.
Selles is a good coach who inherited messes at Reading and Hull City yet got the former thriving and the latter surviving. But for many in the stands, this was his first impression.
"If there is someone to blame, it's me," he acknowledged. "I am the man responsible, who prepared the team and decides the tactics, pick the line-up and the changes."
Selles picked a team with one holding midfielder and two "No 10s" asked to go from box to box – think Manchester City with Fernandinho, Kevin De Bruyne and David Silva.
But Sydie Peck is even less a Fernandinho than O’Hare and Hamer are the new De Bruyne and Silva.
He is no anchorman – comfortable in a two, but a fish out of water left alone between Bristol City's midfield and attack. It hardly helped that full-backs Femi Seriki and Harrison Burrows like to bomb forward.
Nor did it help that former Barnsley coach Gerhard Struber, in his first competitive game in a Bristol City baseball cap, put two inside-forwards in that space. Anis Mehmeti and Scott Twine – a Hull loanee before Selles' time – had field days.
"We saw a little bit from the friendlies," said Struber. "We saw in transitional moments in defence they have many gaps."
In fairness to Selles, with Oliver Arblaster, Tom Davies and Jamie Shackleton injured, Vinicius Souza sold and Hamza Choudhury’s loan over, there were few alternatives. After three training sessions in Sheffield and no pre-season games for Braga, Djibril Soumare went unused. He will play some part at Birmingham City in Wednesday's League Cup tie, according to Selles.
The first goal was a brilliant free-kick after Hamer tried to help but fouled in just about the worst part of the pitch with Twine about.
The Robins' second saw Emil Riis easily beat Tyler Bindon out wide, and Rhys Norrington-Davies stand off so Twine could shift a cute reverse pass wing-back Ross McCrorie finished brilliantly.
That took the home side into half-time 2-1 down despite three quarters of the ball and 12 of the 15 shots.
So conceding 36 seconds after the restart was a killer, Riis getting to the byline, Mehmeti peeling off Norrington-Davies to thump a volley.
Norrington-Davies gave the ball away for Twine to make it 4-1 in the 51st minute.
You felt for the defender, beset by injury for three years, when his substitution was cheered shortly afterwards. Here was another victim of insufficient recruitment.
And yet for 12 glorious minutes, the formation worked like a dream.
O'Hare won the ball and Hamer gave it back to him to measure a glorious ball Campbell equalised from.
Hamer and O'Hare then put on a passing masterclass and hemmed the Robins in. Louie Barry had four good chances from the left, forcing one top Radek Vitek save, and Seriki got balls in from the right.
"We created chances but we also won the ball back and didn't let the opposition out of their box," noted Selles. “When we lost that structure is when the real problem came."
Until McCorie's goal, you hoped the pros of the system might outweigh the cons. But the triple substitution featuring Norrington-Davies was pretty much like-for-like.
"We have talented players, we just need to give them the best platform to express themselves," said Selles.
Fitting in both O'Hare and Hamer was sometimes a problem for Chris Wilder, who benched O'Hare for May's 6-0 aggregate play-off semi-final win over Bristol City and despite goals in both games, the final.
Playing Hamer from the left was often the solution but Selles has to keep him sweet before September 1.
He needs a stronger hand with his club so far only spending money on AI "project signings". The £9m from last week's sales of Anel Ahmedhodzic and Kieffer Moore is needed on depth at centre-back, right-back, midfield and centre-forward.
Selles has good players, but he needs more than that.
Sheffield United: Cooper; Seriki (McCallum 74), Bindon, Norrington-Davies (Robinson 57), Burrows; Peck; O'Hare, Hamer; Brooks (Cannon 57), Campbell, Barry (One 57). Unused substitutes: Davies, Soumare, Ukaki, Marsh, Sasnauskas.
Bristol City: Vitek; McCrorie, Tanner, Vyner, Atkinson, Hirakawa (Sykes 74); Knight, Randell; Twine (Bell 70), Mehmeti; Riis (Armstrong 82). Unused substitutes: Lumley, Knight-Lebel, Roberts, Yeboah, Cornick, Murphy
Referee: J Smith (Lincolnshire).