Key events
Here’s Aaron Bower’s match report from Bramall Lane.
More Wilder: “I just spoke to the players and went look after yourselves and look after each other and then I thought if I was a player would I have a beer tonight if I was a player? 100%.
“You’ve got to enjoy nights like this, it’s been an incredibly challenging season for us and to have a night like this at home in front of our spectators I think gives the boys a boost and the recognition that they really deserve.”
Will Wilder be having a beer? 100%.
Chris Wilder is talking at length. “It’s only gonna be good if we get a result,” he says of Wembley, as “a United punter.” He still refers to his team getting 92 points, rather than the 90 on the boards as Blades were deducted a couple of points.
Jack Robinson, Blades skipper, spoke to Sky: “The last thing you want to do is give them an early goal. We nullified them all game, were really good at the back and clinical in the box.
“I am really proud of the lads – there were a lot of young lads in there. It’s obviously disappointing to get 90 points and not to go up automatically but we have a great day out for the fans now.
“We’ll train hard, keep in good shape, focus and keep the confidence high, then get down to Wembley.”
Full-time: Sheffield United 3-0 Bristol City (6-0 agg)
A record scoreline over two legs in this division’s play-offs. Blades were disciplined and ruthless and will return to Wembley and seek to end their hoodoo. For City, Liam Manning has made many friends and admirers with his fortitude in the toughest of circumstances. He is to be wished a good, relaxed summer.
90 min: The referee does not prolong any agonies. That’s it.
88 min: Great noise on a gala night for the red side of Sheffield. It’s a fine city and the Premier League is enriched by at least one of its clubs being up. Two Yorkshire teams up there too? Time was there were many more.
84 min: Utter desperation for City. A consolation goal is so much less likely than a seventh. This has been the club’s best season in many years and yet it ends like this.
Goal! Sheffield United 3-0 Bristol City (6-0 agg) (O’Hare, 83)
Too easy, so awful for City. Burrows’ is a lovely dummy, and O’Hare scores with ease. That follows his goal in the first leg.
82 min: Blades record in the play-offs: four finals, no promotions.
80 min: Off goes Vini Souza for Tom Davies, the big-haired former Toffee. Souza, who was occasionally good in the Premier League and occasionally not, has been a key play in Blades’ Championship season.
78 min: Michael Cooper makes a fine save from George Tanner. They want a clean sheet.
76 min: Plenty of space now on Bramall Lane’s big pitch. Rak-Sakyi’s pass is a beauty and Sydie Peck’s shot seems to be deflected wide. Plenty of youth in a Blades team that’s also full of experience. And steel, always steel.
73 min: More from Kim Thonger: “Also. I had the pleasure of attending my first stadium gig on May 17 1975, in Stoke. Low on the bill were Ace, and they played How Long. Highlight of the night, the Sensational Alex Harvey Band rendition of Delilah.”
Plenty of Bon Scott in Alex Harvey.
71 min: Gus Hamer departs, and on comes Rak-Sakyi. The star man wrapped in cotton wool for Wembley in nine days time.
69 min: You’re right, not much happening in this game. Michael Cooper just made a save but City seem to have given up. Vyner, at the other end, makes a fine block to stop Brewster shooting.
67 min: Good evening Kimberley Thonger: “As a Robins supporter of some 50 years standing may I just say how much I look forward, thanks to tonight’s result, to meeting Wrexham in the Championship next season. If we had been promoted this season, we would have missed that treat. As we often say in Somerset, It’s Always Sunny In Nempnett Thrubwell.”
Chew Stoke City, too? Used to spend a lot of time in Nether Stowey, and Fiddington. There was a chicken farm I have yet to remove the smell from my nostrils.
66 min: Matt Burtz is back in AOR corner: “I do know both of those Carrack songs and I wouldn’t have identified that they had the same lead singer in a million years. Hopefully someday this knowledge will benefit me in pub trivia.”
65 min: There’s Wembley places up for grabs here. The City players dream of the beach and the bars. Pre-season must be far too much to contemplate. There’s still 25 minutes of purgatory to play out.
63 min: Blades want more. Is Wilder using this match as shooting practice for his reserve forward line?
61 min: On come three Blades changes: Brewster, O’Hare and Campbell on, Moore, Cannon and Brooks off.
60 min: Tom Cannon fancies a goal but Zak Vyner is brave when he really has no need to be in blocking the ball.
59 min: The Blades fans have been paying tribute to George Baldock, the former United player who died in Greece earlier this season.
56 min: Chris Wilder, well, you can’t say he doesn’t do a good job for the club he loves. Many – outside the club – may not enjoy his methods or persona but he’s the best they’ve had since probably Dave Bassett, and that includes Neil Warnock. All three of those have been football men cut from a certain cloth.
54 min: So then, Blades are off to Wembley where they don’t have the best record. City’s Premier League dreams will have to wait. Perhaps now is the time to think how such a leap would have been too great.
Goal! Sheffield United 2-0 Bristol City (5-0 agg) (Hamer, 52)
That seals it…Hamer smashes his shot off a corner, and off a City boot and in…
49 min: City having to try and build slowly. Credit to them for trying when all is lost of their season. It can’t be easy.
47 min: A foul on Jason Knight and City have a free-kick. They need a Zico to smash this in. Twine’s effort is fine, up and over the wall but too central.
46 min: We go again. Death or glory for City. Do they press the “sod it” button?
Andy Flintoff, on the actual football: “Even with VAR I don’t think it would have been disallowed, given the amount of pushing, shoving and holding ‘standing your ground’ that happens at corners and free-kicks nowadays that doesn’t get punished.”
Yes, the air has rather gone out of this tie, and we are reduced to discussing AOR radio classics. Though, frankly, I’d do that most days if I could.
Matt Burtz gets in touch “I have very little to say about the match itself. I just wanted to thank you for educating me about Paul Carrack. I grew up riding around in my mother’s car listening to Mike and the Mechanics songs on the radio but didn’t know that “Mike” wasn’t the singer of All I Need is a Miracle. (BTW Mike Rutherford is from Chertsey, whose local football team narrowly avoided relegation from the Southern League Premier Division South this season.).”
In fact, that song is sung by Manchester’s Paul Young, of Sad Cafe. Mike had two singers. Paul, sadly now gone, also sang this classic.
Actual Carrack classics, and you might know both of them.
Half-time: Sheffield United 1-0 Bristol City (4-0 agg)
Such a long way back for Bristol City. Blades, as is their way, have been solid and stolid, the opposite of spectacular. City fans will dispute that goal but eventually, Kieffer Moore proved too strong.
45+2 min: Three minutes were added on. Liam Manning inwardly rehearses the speech of his lifetime at half-time.
45 min: Stephen Holliday gets in touch: “To be fair to O’Leary, he was ‘all at sea’ because a united player had a fistful of his shirt, giving him no chance to get to the cross…”
No VAR, see.
43 min: Now, this would be a miracle if a comeback came now. Blades slowly gained control of midfield and the skies and have all but booked their place at Wembley. Did Cannon get the final touch. He was sat on the line, but so were City’s defenders.
Goal! Sheffield United 1-0 Bristol City (Moore, 42)
Corner boomed in, keeper O’Leary all at sea, and the inevitable happens as Moore heads home.
40 min: United look much the more dangerous now. A comeback seems unlikely….
39 min: Now Hamer breaks from a wasted City corner, but his ball to Brooks is shanked. The quality is not Premier class, it has to be said.
38 min: City can’t get it clear, Burrows’ shot begins a spell of pressure and as the ball came in, O’Leary claws the ball away. When he claims a corner he releases Wells. He wins a corner.
