Sheffield United entertain Chris Wilders Middlesbrough this afternoon at the Riverside stadium, a place where Boro made it very difficult to play last season winning 14 games at home.
Chris Wilder got off to a great start as Middlesbrough manager, however as the season came to an end it got worse for him. Boro have recorded 1.66 points per game since Wilder took over.
I’m sure we are all aware of the formation and system Chris Wilder uses, but this is the XI I think Middlesbrough will field against United:
I was contemplating listing Watmore in over Akpom, however I think Boro will start Akpom for his pace and power up against John Egan, something the Irish international struggles against.
As we know, Chris Wilder loves to overload wide areas with the use of overlapping runs from his wide centre-backs. This means the attacking threat will be from down either side rather than through the middle. Against QPR they only attacked in central areas 18% of the time.
Let’s take a look at Boro’s average positions vs QPR:
Middlesbrough deploy Howson (16) as a number 6, sometimes he can find himself in the ‘quarterback’ role that we see Norwood in, where he picks the ball up from the defence.
Looking at his touch map for the last game it is evident that Middlesbrough look to get Howson in the same pocket of space as we do with Norwood down the right side, where he can whip in crosses. Also, like Norwood, he will look to play first time balls over the top of the defence down the right channel. Our defence will need to be wary of this and either play an offside trap or drop collectively. The offside trap was used effectively by QPR in the last game so maybe that could work for us against Boro too.
Here is Middlesbrough’s heatmap for the game against QPR:
Chris Wilder’s side really struggled to create a threat in central areas and this is because they lack a player who is going to drift into pockets in front of the back line as we saw from the average positions earlier. So in terms of the build-up United won’t need to worry about a defender getting sucked into the pocket, because there isn’t much of a pocket presence in the Boro team.
A slight worry for Middlesbrough is that they seem to give away big chances, conceding 7 big chances in 2 league games and their cup game against Barnsley midweek.
As good as Jones is at going forward, he could be deemed as a weak spot in the defence, he has been dribbled past 5 times in the first 2 league games and we know that Sheffield United possess plenty of players who have the ability to ghost past a player or two.