Lower League Week – Northampton are cobblers and Sheffield United still blunt

Bramall Lane, the home of Sheffield United

Blades Are Still Blunt

The frustration felt by Northampton and Hartlepool will be at the very least equalled by Sheffield United. The weekend’s loss to Carlisle means that the Blades have just four points from seven games, their only win coming against Notts County, who played most of the game with ten men. Watching that opening game, I thought Sheffield United looked fairly decent, but every report I’ve heard from their matches since has suggested they’ve been astonishingly poor. I’m inclined to cut them slack for their performance in the loss to Brentford with the news that their play-maker Kevin McDonald was likely to be sold coming through the day before the game.

The loss of a man that reports suggest new manager David Weir wanted to build his team around will have been a practical problem, as will the additions of Jose Baxter and Florent Cuvelier after the season had started, in addition to the damage done by losing a key player. But picking up one point from 18 is exceptionally poor, especially the result against Carlisle.

If poor results are the result of transfer disruption, Sheffield United will probably have more to fear in January. Recently several places have claimed that gigantic centre half Harry Maguire is being looked at by Manchester United and Chelsea amongst others. It also appears that the club are looking to strengthen the forward line. At the end of the window, Sheffield United had been in talks with free agent Marlon King and apparently plan to bid again for Coventry’s Leon Clarke though Coventry have insisted that Clarke won’t be loaned out in the type of ‘emergency loan’ that are often a transfer in all but name.

The Latest From Coventry

Gary McSheffrey, whose second spell at Coventry hasn’t been anywhere near the success of his first spell, this week became the third and most notable player to have his contract terminated by the club since the close of the transfer window. Meanwhile, several Coventry junior teams have returned to the Alan Higgs Centre, owned by the people who own the stadium, maybe paving the way for some kind of reconciliation. Given that SISU had eight weeks ago told the local Coventry Telegraph that they would have bought land for a new stadium within eight weeks, and have failed to do so, reconciliation may begin to seem more appealing.

On the field, Coventry won yet again at ‘home’, this time 2-1 against Gillingham. Cody McDonald, released by Coventry in the summer, scored Gillingham’s goal. Speaking after the match, Steven Pressley revealed that he let McDonald go because of the lack of an ‘outstanding attribute’, as he had been planning to play with a lone striker and wanted specialist strikers rather than all-rounders like McDonald. It’s an interesting interview, in which Pressley also revealed he was motivated to switch to a 4-4-2 rather than his preferred 4-3-3 by watching Borussia Dortmund in pre-season. Given that much of Coventry’s success has been built around the relationship between Leon Clarke and Callum Wilson, and the possibility that McDonald would have been kept on at the expense of Wilson had the decision to play with a two-man attack been made sooner (eight of 21-year-old Wilson’s nine league goals came this season) it’s interesting to think how different things could have been.

Orient Express Themselves

Although Coventry have rightly won a lot of praise, League One’s success story this season has to be Leyton Orient.

Going into the weekend, Leyton Orient had the Football League’s last 100% record, and were facing Port Vale, the kind of banana skin that unexpected overachievers might be expected to trip up against. Leyton Orient conceded first for the first time this season, before equalising with a dramatic David Mooney volley from a possible offside position. Mooney scored again before Port Vale levelled the scores, then the teams were separated by a dramatic late run from Orient’s Kevin Lisbie to score the winner two minutes from time.

On Tuesday night, Orient were up against bottom of the league Notts County in a match pushed back because of players on international duty. Slightly comically, it was the league’s bottom rather than top team who had the players away. Leyton Orient’s star forward Kevin Lisbie scored a first half brace – the first a placed shot and the second a poacher’s goal just before the break. Dean Cox – whose spilled shot Lisbie had tucked away – struck from range in the second half, before County’s Danny Haynes pulled a goal back. The stats suggest that County weren’t as bad as the score suggests - grabbing a similar number of shots and more possession – but two goals in the last ten minutes made the score 5-1. Leyton Orient are now five points clear of Peterborough and Wolves after seven games, and are both League One’s highest goal scorers and guardians of the division’s tightest defence.

Given the surprise of their start, the obvious comparison is to Tranmere, who started last year’s League One season in similar fashion. But given that the majority of this Orient team were together before the summer, rather than being pulled together as Tranmere were, they should have a more solid mental foundation. The title is probably beyond a club with Leyton Orient’s meagre resources, but the play-offs at least look a very real possibility.

England’s home of entertaining football. Courtesy of Nigel Cox