Sheffield United boss hands Birmingham City brutal 26-word verdict

Sheffield United head coach Paul Heckingbottom believes Birmingham City should have been put well out of sight in the Blades’ narrow 2-1 win at St Andrew’s on Monday afternoon. The manager thought his team were dominant enough to score plenty more goals than they did, ignoring what was at times a robust defensive display from Blues.

Birmingham did well to cancel out the visitors in the first half with a resolute showing and even hit the bar through Lukas Jutkiewicz in the 14th minute. The Blades had two efforts of their own cannon off the woodwork just after the half-hour mark but were largely uninspiring - as was the impressive defending of the home team.

The start of the second 45 was a different story, though, as Sheffield United capitalised on complacency from John Eustace’s side with two quickfire goals. The first came from Oliver McBurnie as he headed in from a Chris Basham cross and then James McAtee doubled his team’s lead, passing into an open goal after Iliman Ndiaye rounded Neil Etheridge.

Dion Sanderson scored a lovely volley late on to make things interesting but Heckingbottom believes his side should never have been in that position to be just one up in the closing stages. “Look how wasteful we were today. That could’ve been about a month’s worth of chances in the Premier League. I think we could’ve had 15 goals,” Heckingbottom said in a rather brutally honest tone in the post-match press conference.

Blues likely won’t care too much about the Sheffield United man’s comments, though, as something far more important is on the horizon. A new era is dawning as it was announced ahead of the game that Shelby Companies Limited, led by American businessman Tom Wagner, will be buying a majority stake in the club. That is of course subject to EFL and Hong Kong Stock Exchange checks, but it seems next season could well be an exciting one.