Why the need for goals is already critical for Sheffield United’s Premier League survival hopes

There are 28 matches to play and this is still, in essence, the squad which pushed so hard to qualify for Europe last season. There is still hope, but a cold, foggy night in West Bromwich did a lot to suck it out of you.

Even at this stage, a match between the Premier League’s only winless sides was huge. The Blades rose to it, showing the character, determination and quality of football required. But they lost.

They lost because they could not put the ball in the net.

The visitors created 22 chances, yet you never felt they would score. Of all the possible shortcomings, it is the most damaging.

English football’s tier one is a privileged position but the margins between even the lower top half the Blades finished last season in and the bottom are extremely thin.

Since last season they have lost on-loan goalkeeper Dean Henderson but Aaron Ramsdale’s performance at the Hawthorns showed the drop in quality is not especially big. The loss of Jack O’Connell has been far more telling. His absence after the first Coronavirus lockdown started the demise.

That extra vulnerability has made it more important to score goals this season, but only four have been forthcoming in 10 league games, two of them penalties.

Strikers Oli McBurnie and Lys Mousset and midfielders John Lundstram and John Fleck contributed 22 combined last season – not massive numbers for top scorers, but enough when the other cogs in the machine worked so well. Injuries have hampered Mousset and Fleck, but the quartet are yet to register this season.

Fleck arrived late and unmarked at the near post in the fourth minute. The player of 2019-20 would have found the net but this season’s version drilled narrowly wide. Mousset must still be wondering how he did not score at the end of his first run-out of 2020-21.

It was the sixth added minute when George Baldock got to the byline and pulled the ball back. West Bromwich Albion manager Slaven Bilic was incredulous so much time was added to the second half and probably had a point, but the officials could have added 77 minutes and the Sheffield United team besieging the home goal still would not have scored.

Mousset’s return from injury was talked up before the game as manager Chris Wilder tries to pump some positivity into his side but the Frenchman was only able to confirm it was one of those nights when the ball fell to him in the six-yard box and with the goal at his mercy, blasted over.

It threatens to be one of those seasons.

Half-an-hour earlier, Baldock produced his own terrible miss. Even when the Blades hit the target they found Sam Johnstone in excellent form, although Ramsdale was worked harder as West Brom made more out of less.

The first dozen minutes were all Sheffield United, then the Baggies scored.

You could see and hear the determination Wilder had put into his side as he prowled around an intense warm-up at unusually close quarters and it had the desired effect. When West Brom worked the kick-off back to Johnstone, Oliver Burke, back in the line-up against his old side after five matches on the bench, flew in to close him down. Burke had the first effort on goal inside just 45 seconds.

Falling over, he barely made contact, but the statement of intent had been made. Burke was Sheffield United’s most dangerous player but his contribution was largely creative and someone was needed to take the chances. When he picked out McBurnie in the sixth minute, Johnstone saved and Chris Basham could not convert the rebound.

Burke’s 68th-minute flop to the turf felt emblematic, close but not close enough to Lundstram’s wonderful curling cross.

West Brom only needed one chance. In Matheus Pereira they have a creator of rare quality and when the ball came loose in the 13th minute, he pinged a pass to Karlan Grant. With Ethan Ampadu and Enda Stevens injured and Jack Robinson having lost his manager’s faith, it was Premier League debutant Kean Bryan’s job to chase the forward. Huddersfield Town fans will tell you he is hard to catch.

Ramsdale came off his line to save at the cost of a corner, but Sander Berge’s scuffed clearance from it perfectly picked out Conor Gallagher, who carefully found the net from the D.

Bryan showed why he was preferred to Robinson with an excellent cross minutes after the goal but Johnstone’s tip-over from Burke’s cleverly-guided header was better still. The pattern had already been set.

Wilder tried to change it, and not in the way he usually has this season by going from 3-5-2 to a diamond 4-4-2. Plan B was to match West Brom’s 3-4-1-2 – McBurnie dropped into the hole, with David McGoldrick an unused substitute – and there was a plan C, 4-3-1-2.

Both produced a pleasing number of chances but no goals.

McBurnie got up well at a first-half corner but headed at Johnstone and had a volley deflected wide from a low Basham cross.

After some detailed whispering by Berge, a clever free-kick played him in down the side in the 81st minute to drill a cross and just as it looked like McBurnie had nutmegged Johnstone, the ball ricocheted off the goalkeeper’s ankle. Johnstone denied him again when played in by Mousset.

Fleck, Lundstram and Brewster, with a header, also hit West Brom players rather than the net, Basham again missed the target but it was nothing compared to Mousset and Baldock. When substitute Brewster had a stoppage-time shot saved, Baldock’s attempted lob was limp and easily caught.

This team badly needs goals. Where it will find them is hard to say.

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