Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder warned supporters not to be misled just because the opponent’s name wasn’t a familiar one yesterday.
The Blades beat Lincoln City 3-0 with a Patrick Bamford brace either side of Tahith Chong’s goal just after half-time.
While the Blades were good for the win, City matched their shots and bettered their xG, which led to Wilder praising our resilience and application.
“We needed a clean sheet; we needed a big performance,” he said after the game.
“The team that we were playing, one of the best away records in the division, hasn’t just been given them. It wasn’t given their 100-plus points last season. Well coached last year, well coached this year. Awkward opposition.”
He went on to explain, as NTT20 did a few weeks ago, that it is the name of the club fooling people at present, with armchair pundits not looking beyond ‘Lincoln City’.
“(They’re) honest, played to a way that’s really, really effective and regardless of the name of the football club or where they’ve been or how many years they’ve not been in the Championship or if they’ve never been in the Championship.
“They’re here on merit and they’re going to pose a lot of teams’ problems this season and we understood that challenge right away through the two or three weeks that we had to prepare for it.”
Indeed, the win lifted the Blades above City and into the top place in the bottom half of the table. We tumbled three places, and our reecent impressive away record also fell.
“They beat Preston, they beat Bolton, they drew against Southampton, and narrowly got beaten at home against Swansea,” continued Wilder, who briefly played for the Imps at the end of his career
“We had to produce big performances.”
Sadly for the Imps, they did just that, and while our Wyscout xG of 2.33 looks impressive, more than 1.25 of that came late in the game, when club record signing Mikkel Ladefoged spurned a great chance to double his tally for the season, albeit for a consolation goal.
Each bar shows the two sides' share of that row's total, so it says who had more — not whether it was good, which would need a league-wide distribution this one match cannot provide.
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