Wednesday evening’s midweek Championship clash between Sheffield United and Birmingham City at St Andrew’s Stadium was always going to be a tough and tricky affair.
With Birmingham having a mixed season themselves, they had been doing reasonably well under manager Garry Monk, but with a points deduction they have managed to keep their form floating above water and as manager Chris Wilder referenced post-game, Leeds United saw how tricky they could be recently.
We knew what to expect, and although Enda Stevens gave us the first half lead, Birmingham equalised quickly and we couldn’t get our noses back in front. Although it’s slight advantage Leeds again now, a point is a point and Wilder wasn’t going to be too disheartened even if his frustration and not taking the win was probably clear for all to see.
Speaking to the Yorkshire Evening Post with second spot wide open in terms of the battle, our gaffer explained post-game that time would tell if the point was valuable as the twists and turns aren’t over yet.
“I don’t know yet. There was one team who wanted to go and win it and get the three points. It’s a tough place to come, as a team (Leeds) found out on Saturday. You guys will talk about it, the fans will talk about it but I won’t. I’ll just talk about the accumulation of points. I can’t be a rollercoaster myself. We have to keep nice and calm, we have some fabulous games ahead. It’s not what we wanted tonight but the players shouldn’t feel down about it. They went for the win in the second half. One match doesn’t decide anything, especially at this stage. It’s all about an accumulation of points. This is all about how many people will get over a period of games. The one thing we’ve shown, and I’ve told the boys this afterwards, is that we’re going to take it right down to the wire.”
Wilder’s attitude is spot on here, stay balanced, focus on the games that come as the ‘to you, to me’ references are entirely appropriate here.