The Blades kicked off their home campaign for the 22/23 season in great fashion, scoring 2 goals and keeping a clean sheet. Scoring and leaking goals in the early parts of last season were a real issue at Bramall Lane.
It took until the 3rd home game of the season for United to win a game at Bramall Lane last season, and it took until the 5th game for the Blades to keep a clean sheet.
There were a lot of standout performers against Millwall: Ndiaye’s hold up and link play was superb, Ahmedhodzic looked unstoppable whenever he got going in attack and he looked as solid as a rock when defending. But one player who was singled out by the Sheffield United manager for their performance was Sander Berge.
The Norwegian scored a very composed goal in the first half when Fleck played him through on goal, after a mistake from the Millwall defence. The keeper came out to meet Berge, but the midfielder wasn’t fazed as he rounded the keeper and stroked the ball home into an empty net, to put United up 2-0. To add to his goal, Berge registered a 75% dribble success rate and he made 2 key passes.
Paul Heckingbottom said after the game:
“I love performances like that. There were times he was playing a different game. He was good but also it was the detail without the ball for Sander. His goal he scored, we do a lot of defending on our set plays and he’s the one with the position he takes up, which is the correct position, for him to get first contact on the header and he breaks. When you are playing a team whose threat is set plays you have to work on how you deal with that but then it’s an opportunity to go the other way.
Heckingbottom added:
“He gets the first contact and then he gets the goal. His recovery run in the first half, they are match-winning moments. We always talk about goals but they are the match-winning moments the other way. That’s a great example along with many others of why Wes didn’t have many saves to make.” [Yorkshire Live]