Kudos to Sheffield United

Photocredit: Wikipedia

Full marks have to go out to Sheffield United for how they have been going about their business this season. Although with the win they still sit only 9th in the table, we are talking about a team that was expected to be fighting to stay in the premier league. The gap between 7th place Tottenham and 19th place Norwich is still only a mere 5 points. Similar to the top of the Bundesliga but instead it's the bottom of the premier league. But Sheffield don't look like a side going down. With their latest win over Arsenal yesterday, they now sit on 12 points through 9 games and have conceded less goals than ANYONE in the premier league. That's right, they are tied for the best defense in the entire premier league.

Sheffield United remind me a lot of David Wagner's Huddersfield the season they survived. The reason for this is that that team also was superb on defense which is why they were arguably the worst team on paper in the league by a country mile but managed to stay up. This is a testament to great coaching. Wilder is doing a fantastic job with this team. It's also worth noting that on top of all this, many of their goals have been individual errors by a specific player such as a player giving the ball away due to a mental error, or the howler by the keeper against Liverpool which cost them the game. Also like Wagner's Huddersfield, their weakness is that they can't score. While they are tied for first in defense in the league, they are also tied with Crystal Palace (Who sit in an impressive 6th place themselves I should add) for the 3rd least potent offense. But hey, Everton despite having players like Richarlison have no more than them.

While I fully expect Sheffield to probably gain fatigue over the course of a season, the system does look too good to see them finish in the bottom three. Many offenses in the league would have trouble breaking them down. If even Liverpool could only manage one and it was a total fluke, it makes for a pretty darn good defense. This is actually why I would find them more likely to survive than Norwich despite the very impressive result that the Canaries put up against City a few weeks back. They have followed that up with three losses and a draw and you couldn't expect someone like Teemu Pukki to keep that up all season long. There is no reason to think Sheffield will lose the plot defensively. In fact, if they can avoid mental lapses, they would allow even less goals. If Dean Henderson for example is the next Manchester United keeper, he'll have drop those howler's out of his game altogether. Howler's costing your team against the likes of Liverpool and Chelsea are not going to fly at United. Not that United is a team firing on all cylinders by any stretch either.

Plenty of blame is being thrown Arsenal's way for how they looked in this game and rightfully so, but the sample size is big enough that a lot of credit should be given to Sheffield United as well for how they have played this season.