Sheffield United boss Paul Heckingbottom, who actually played for Sunderland’s academy, has hinted at a few changes for the game on Wednesday, and he also urged his players to ‘fight and scrap’.
CHANGES TO BE MADE
“I don’t think anyone has played every single time. Only Eges (John Egan) has missed out through suspension, other than that there isn’t anyone. No player likes coming off. No player likes not being involved. But they understand that my job isn’t necessarily to keep them individually happy about things like that. It’s to look after the interests of the group as a whole. And they do understand, all of them, that because of the nature of the league we have got ourselves into this position in the table because everyone has contributed. The change to five substitutions was big and there’s been a spell when I’ve not been able to make the most of that.”
LAST TIME
"The last time we played Sunderland at Bramall Lane (in August) we had John Egan playing a diag from middle centre-back to Rhys Norrington-Davies getting in behind their defence. Rhys was our left centre-back. That's what we want. That's the intent we're talking about."
LUTON DEFEAT
"Having watched the game back and looked at certain numbers, that was a million miles away from how we want to play so there was real clarity in that. There has to be clarity about what we're about. We made a lot of unforced errors but I've not focused a thing on that because we need players to take the ball, to make errors. If you're not making errors you're being safer. We need to make sure we take the ball, drive, run, play forward, commit bodies into the box. Then we've got bodies high to win the ball back. If we do that and get beaten, it's on me.”
POINT TO PROVE
"We expected to perform much better than we did (on Saturday). And this is not just players, it's everyone – my preparation and the staff's. We need to be better because it might happen again. You either bury your head in the sand and hope or you stick your chest out and fight and scrap."
NO SHYING AWAY
"If you go into any pub in any part of the country you can sit next to someone who'll tell you either them or someone they know would have been a top footballer. They'll give you the excuse of injury, women or drink. It's always one of the three. When things get tough, there can be an excuse or a reason why. We haven't worked that way. We've had many an opportunity, many a time we could have had an excuse but we haven't. It's helped us keep climbing the league for 18 months and get to the quarter-final of the FA Cup and we need to keep that mentality because it's not going to get easier, it's going to get harder.”
HAPPY WHERE WE ARE
"If anyone had said at the start of the season with 10 (league) games to go you'd be second and in the quarter-final of the FA Cup, we'd have snapped their hands off. We are where we deserve to be. We need to focus on the things we've done well up to this point and try and block out the rest. Ultimately it's down to us and what we do so we have to use that as a real positive."
