Sheffield United 'scrambling' by doing the ugly things to get through to international break

The rain lashed the Pennines all night, making the early-evening trek across them even more joyless than usual. Fewer than 12,000 fans still able to tolerate the Venky family's misrule rattled around the 31,367-capacity Ewood Park.

Meanwhile, Sheffield United struggled for rhythm, trying all sorts of tactical tricks to stifle Blackburn, but causing few problems themselves. When the hosts took the lead through Leeds-born Kristi Montgomery's first Rovers goal 20 minutes in, it felt like it was going to be a long night for those who had made the trip from Sheffield.

Michael Cooper had to lay on a man-of-the-match performance in goal.

But the Blades won.

They only had two shots on target, but Tom Cannon coolly finished his and Sydie Peck (inset), who had made both sides’ first goals, produced some gorgeous skill to make the third too, which this time he was able to finish himself.

Six Championship games into the season, the Blades have lost one. They have nine points.

If they play like they did on Tuesday for the rest of the season, it will be a major letdown.

But the character to win anyway is serving them well at a time when a squad rebuilt at a post-parachute payment loss is picking up points until the bonds are formed which hopefully takes this team to a higher level.

If you had to choose between one or the other, you would go for character every time. Especially on a wet Tuesday night in east Lancashire.

"We're scrambling at the moment," admitted a proud Chris Wilder after the final whistle.

"We've got to get through to the international break.

"We've coached the shape all the way through pre-season and we're having to change it, and you look at like-for-like substitutions, we haven't got that.

"We've lost a lot of energy in Harrison (Burrows), in Femi (Seriki), in Chongy (Tahith Chong) and Ryan (One - all injured)."

Wilder tried a 5-3-2-ish formation in the first half, with left-sided defenders Rhys Norrington-Davies and Sam McCallum trying to do a variety of different jobs.

Romelle Donovan was generally ahead of his central midfield colleagues, but not in the hole behind the striker, more the pocket between the inside-right channel and touchline.

Norrington-Davies was substituted at half-time, and the Blades went 4-4-2.

For the last 10 minutes or so, Jamal Baptiste came on for Ben Brereton Diaz, a return to three centre-backs.

"We felt that was the right thing to do first half," explained Wilder. "They have a big threat down the right, which at times first half we nullified, we just sat a little bit too deep.

"But we're working on stuff with a day's work on the training ground.

"It wasn't as clean as we wanted it to be but they stuck at it and we tweaked it at half-time."

The signing earlier that day of free agent Jordan Ayew added to the number of players who have not had a proper pre-season as the Blades cut corners in the transfer market. At least loaning out Nils Zatterstrom and Ehije Ukaki - the last of James Bord's disastrous AI signings still at Shirecliffe - was no hardship. Artificial, certainly, intelligent? No.

"Possibly he can do half an hour, 45 minutes - he's been training in his dad's club in Ghana," said Wilder of Ayew - cast off in Leicester City's post-double relegation cloth-cutting.

"I don't know what people expect us to drop on in the market, but I feel he's a really good one to have - character experience, played at the highest level, available and good to work with, a top pro."

The Blades cannot do without that character now more than ever.

"We're grinding it out at the moment and I think that's a quality that shouldn't be underestimated," said Wilder. "We've got character, we've got a strong mentality. We've got good players that will play better individually and collectively. We'll get into that rhythm and players will get up to form."

After such an imperfect summer, what did we expect?

"We're six games in, we’ve won two, drawn three, lost one," said Wilder. "So everybody just needs to calm down a little bit."

It needs to get better but anyone whose memory stretches back 12 months should know it could be a lot worse.