Sheffield United 1 v West Ham United 0
The Premier League
Friday 10 January 2020
Burnley U23 2 v Sheffield United U23 0
U23 Professional Development League
Played at Curzon Ashton
Monday 13 January 2020
SUFC 2019/20 Games 46 & 47
Twitter @ball_sup
Untappd ball_sup
Nah. That part of our Academy Program. Going nowhere. Fast. Struggling to stay off the bottom of the league. Results plummeting. Yet more new faces masquerading as trialists. Soon be 50 players used in less than 20 games. Nobody stretching for the First Team. No joy out there. No smiles. Very little energy. Coaching staff getting sweary & ratty with players. Players going backwards before my very eyes if I'm honest. Man, I hope that Lester & Hughes have a plan. But, I’m not feeling it Brothers & Sisters. Look, we’re the Carrier Bag Firm. Seeing positives is in our DNA. We’ll come to those in due course. But, first. The main elephant in the room. David Parkhouse.
What’s going on? I was never his biggest fan. I never felt he scored nearly enough goals. But, I got it. Big physical presence. Get the ball up to him. He was sent out to play Big Boy Football at Derry City. Scored a bagful I understand. Rumours of a contract. Rumours of interest from other clubs. ?Everton? No fucking rumour today - woeful. I just don’t get it. Are they picking him against his will? Does he not even want to be in a shop window? Maybe help his mates out a bit? Jumping under crosses. Idling about. Being outmuscled time & time again by his Burnley muckers. The only discernible role I could see - he was the defensive zone man at corners. United effectively had four strikers across the squad. Parkhouse & Ndiaye started up top. Jake Young & Sammy Ompreon on the bench. Ndiaye is much better suited as the Ten for me. All four got a run. Parkhouse by far the worst of those four. Jake Young came on at 57 for Callum Gribbin, with Ndiaye slipping back into the Ten. Immediately. I’m saying, immediately. Jake looked twice as lively as Parkhouse. Immediately.
At one stage, Jake collected the ball on the edge of his own box & ran with it to the edge of the Burnley penalty area. My contemporaneous notes tell the tale of how I was feeling. And, I quote;
“Get fucking Everton on the phone for him instead”
Parkhouse was subbed for Sammy Ompreon on 76. On 82, Oli Greaves rolled a great pass right into the stride of Sammy’s intelligent run. Only a Red Card pro foul prevented him getting his shot off.
Right. Onwards. The Trialist was Noah van Geenen. Aged 20. Been in Sparta Rotterdam’s system. What’s he supposed to do? They’ve stuck him at Right Centre Back. With Kamarl Grant alongside him. Yes mate. THAT Kamarl Grant. The one who’s signing was announced this morning. Two complete newcomers. Probably the first word they’d spoken to each other was “yours” as the first cross came in. It’s a joke. How is a trialist supposed to put his goods on show in those circumstances? How did he do? Guess. Nothing wrong particularly. Nothing right particularly. Looked like his shirt fitted him. It’s a joke. Big tall lad. Right footed.
To cap it all. Our “best” player (opinion), Reece York, was stuck in at makeshift Right Wing Back. Usually I’m a big fan of shoving players out of their comfortable position. But, not this afts mate. Have a look around. It says a lot about Reece’s all action style, flexibility and skills that the best effort in our first half came from him. Ndiaye wriggled free on the left, turned his man, and got a high looping cross over. It was actually Reece making all the ground to get on the end of that in the six yard box. But, he fouled the keeper in his jump. A few players showed some positives in parts. But, only in parts. We had nothing sustained at all. Although I liked the way Reece handled his role, he too was anonymous for stretches of the second half. Ndiaye was our main attacking threat in the first half. Coming deep. Winning the ball. Creating space with his close skills. He was also more prepared to, and more effective at, pressing the Burnley defence. But, there was so little going on around him. And, he got involved in a mad kerfuffle on 63. At one stage, a player from each side was on the deck. Ndiaye clearly took exception and squared up. In my opinion, the Burnley player was lucky as he put his hands on Ndiaye twice (upper chest/throat area). The ref actually brought the two captains together to give them the hard stare. Ndiaye was carrying on about 30 yards away even as that was happening. He’d Red Misted and put in a bad retaliatory challenge a few minutes later. The resulting free kick was floated in. Marking was woeful. And, a neat cushioned header looped in. Hughes immediately hauled Ndiaye off to avoid any further mither.
That brought Oli Greaves on. Oli was also initially lively. Before succumbing to the general malaise. To be fair, I’d written Utd off. But, they did have a much brighter later spell & could have nicked one back a couple of times. Harrison Foulstone arrived late and had a good shot saved. Greaves drew a great save from the keeper from the free kick when Ompreon had been hauled over. Parkhouse’s main positive contribution was on 55. He got a good ball over from the left for Ndiaye. But, he could only dink it at the keeper.
But, overall, very little to carp about. Very disjointed. Very little build up play. Very little link up play. Very little energy. And NO Beer.
Stats
I have now Blogged from 894 games in 1,973 days
No comments:
Post a Comment