[theo_luddite]

Wendies v Town
or as they would have it
The Massive v The Village  

(Well, you have to massage their ego's once in a while)

Hillsborough Stadium
Sheffield
S6 1SW
17/May/2017

Where's that then?
Just south of Penistone - just north of Owlerton Speedway Stadium, the home of The Tigers in case you get lost.

Snoots covered all the important stuff in the First Leg thread - so no need rehash all that stuff. Sod the stats and all that other stuff I normally do because this is now a total one off, nothing that went before matters mutch.

Down the A629 past Penistone we go for the return leg of the game of 4 halves to see who plays against the winner of the M4(ish) derby at Wemberlee for the right to win a fortune that some scum bag of an agent will try to take off us next season.

A quick review of the First Leg
(in case you forgot what was writ by those what contributed some fine prose to Snoot's thread)

Wagner post match
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052xcyd

Carvahal post match
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p052x96d



Wendies, as I predicted, double parked the double decker bus and surprise surprise, we couldn't get passed them to blow the bloody doors off.
What we did really well was stopping them hitting us on the break.



Had to find a space for that one.  

The bad news is we still haven't won a home play-off match or scored this season against Wendies.
The good news is that Wagner hasn't lost a play-off match yet either.  

Wendies finished above us on goal difference despite spending 5x more on strikers alone than we spent on our squad. That fantastic new strike force scored 4 more goals than us, whoop-de-freakin-do. They beat us on goal difference largely because they defend like it's the only way to go (shades of Boro here maybe?) whereas once in a while (well too often in a while really) our defence goes completely t!ts up and hence we have a -ve goal difference. We won't be the first to go up with one if we win these last two games but it doesn't make for the best entance to the Prima Donna League where teams that can't score often end up in the bottom 3 (not just us eh Wendies?) and back in the Chumpionship. Still, I'll take being a yoyo club like The Baggies (were), Hull are and Burnalee have just baout stopped being.

Wendies suddenly popped up above us as we turned in a run of mid-table form that we'd have settled for back in August had it lasted all season. Except we got off to a great start and that relatively poor run of results maybe could have been an auto place had we kept it up. Why didn't it? Well cruciall injuries to Brown, Kachunga and Palmer amongst others all at the same time certainly didn't help along with a season long inability to beat packed defences. Dropping the odd player into the squad who played as well as the guy he replaced worked for the first 2/3rds of the season, but we've lacked the required umph to get over the line when 1/3rd or more of the team was out injured.

So, summary of the first game - one team tried to win but didn't really create enough clear cut chances. Cynical tackling by the other side prevented a few breakaways that the ref occassionally punished accordingly. The other team sat back per the script they play to and tried to play on the break, but Town saw it coming and stopped most of it at source. The £20+ million strike force - didn't get a sniff really. Not a shot on target in 90+ minutes.

Wednesday night at Wendies

Right so will owt change in the 3rd and 4th half of the game of 4 halves? Probably not. Wendies don't attack much at home really either. Same boring way - set up not to lose, catch 'em on the break. I don't doubt they will try a bit on the odd occassion this time, hey 5 wins out of the last 6 league matches says they get something right now and then. Just when it looked like Fulham might pip Wendies to the 6th spot they put a great run together, which dropped Beeston Pathetic down to 7th as Fulham's late run for one of the places they possibly should have been in all season finally came to fruition.

Regardless of all that, this season has been a blast and win lose or draw at Wendies on Wednesday won't change that. This is the most fun us old farts have had since 69/70 when more than a few glory hunters jumped on the band wagon only to get hooked. If only they and we knew what was coming? Yeh, beating West Ham 4-2 in the Cup, beating Mansfield and The Blunts on penalties in play-off finals have helped a lot, but those last 2 weren't at this level or the one above.

Wagbo has said it. It's been a long time since we had some real hero's and legends at this club. Muck or nettles boys? Muck or nettles. Heroes? Your choice. Go do it. The fans did their bit on Sunday, go do your bit on Wednesday.

PS - do you think Quaner's first touch on Sunday was influenced by a certain penalty on Saturday?
 

PPS - We've never lost a shoot-out if it comes to it and we've a squad full of Germans - just in case you didn't listen to Wagbo talking to Oggy.