Sheffield United told: 'It shows how much mentality can change a game' after tough week
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Less than a week ago, Paul Heckingbottom’s second placed squad boasted a 10 point advantage over their nearest challengers Middlesbrough and were unbeaten in 13 games. But after suffering back to back defeats, first to Michael Carrick’s team and then at Millwall last weekend, that lead has now been cut to four although United still enjoy a game in hand over the former England midfielder’s side.
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Heckingbottom refused to pull any punches during a brutally honest assessment of his players’ performance in south London, particularly throughout a first-half which saw them fall way short of their usual high-standards.
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But after seeing them force their way back into the contest, with Tommy Doyle and substitute James McAtee responding to the first of three goals Tom Bradshaw scored for the hosts, the United manager told The Star: “It’s out of character. We know what the problem is. But we can’t brush it under the carpet and hope it doesn’t happen again.
“I said to the players at half-time: ‘Do we want to be the team that moans when we play on a Wednesday night and then travel soon after?’ No. We don’t. What happened, second-half, shows how much you can influence a game mentally if you want to.”
Heckingbottom admitted United “maybe lost a little bit of composure” towards the end of the contest, when Bradshaw punished some slack defending to send Millwall sixth in the table. When McAtee produced a delightful finish to level the scoreline, the visitors were threatening to wrestle control of a match before being undone by a careless piece of defending.
“We had our moments, especially when we broke,” said Heckingbottom. “How we play, we stretch teams but we didn’t do it enough. We showed moments of quality but ultimately were second best and the annoying thing is that we’d done the hard work. We gave it away. It was so frustrating to get back into it and then give another goal away.”