Sheffield United beating Man City and rest of country in one key area – but it isn’t helping boss feel any better amid tough spell

The Blades’ tally of expected goals this season is higher than every other team in the country, including free-scoring Premier League title favourites Manchester City – who, in mitigation, have played fewer games than Paul Heckingbottom’s side.

That fact, depending on your view of statistics in general, either means nothing or suggests that United are doing an awful lot right, even if they aren’t managing to be as consistent as they were earlier in the season when they stormed to the top of the Championship table.

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Boss Heckingbottom is leaning towards the former camp, it seems. “It doesn't make me feel any better,” he admitted after being informed of the stat by The Star ahead of tomorrow’s trip to the Hawthorns and asked if it suggested that an opponent soon would be on the end of a good hiding if everything comes together.

“I hope they are, yeah. You look at it, at the last six games, and we've not won a game. So what do I take from it? Are we doing certain things right? Yeah. Sometimes it's dead easy to see why you've not been winning and I don't need stats to tell me that. The message has been the same; performances haven't differed so much. Who scored the first goal has.

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“Being ruthless at one end and getting punished at the other end for mistakes, that's changed. They're the margins. So it doesn't make me feel any better. It gives us confidence, we know we're doing certain things well, but we have to better.”

Of course, Heckingbottom would rather that be the case than see his side struggling to create chances. They aren’t struggling in that regard; their last six games have seen 102 shots on goal, averaging 17 a game. In the 10 games before the international break, the Blades scored 19 goals – in six games since, they have netted seven.

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“It's an improvement on last season as well, things like that,” Heckingbottom did concede of the xG figure. “And a reflection of the type of team we want to be and how we look like. I don't want to be involved in boring games and our last few certainly haven't been boring.

“We want to be that team, that's on the front foot and creating chances and having a go. Where we've regained the ball, the number of chances we've got as a result, the most goals in the league off high regains... in terms of the picture we want to paint on the pitch, that's fine.

“But that doesn't get you the points. If we win the next four games 1-0 with the lowest xG in the league, everyone's saying how well we're doing again. It's about winning.”

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