Sheffield United Women 4-1 Durham
Sheffield United Women saw off Durham 4-1 in the Women's Championship on Saturday, a result that keeps them in ninth while Durham remain rooted at the bottom with zero points from four matches. To be fair, the home side were never in much danger after Andrews opened the scoring in the twelfth minute, and here's the thing about this fixture — it was never really going to be competitive.
The first half belonged to Sheffield United in every sense. Andrews went ahead with a composed finish, and Hutchison doubled the advantage just before the break with a thirty-seventh-minute strike. Durham's defenders looked lost, and the yellow cards — Devlin at ten minutes, Fergusson eighteen, Warrington thirty-six — told their own story of frustration. By then, the game had settled into something predictable.
The second half brought a brief flicker of hope when Quinn pulled one back at fifty-one minutes, but Andrews responded immediately with a penalty in the fifty-fourth, and she added a third at sixty-nine to complete her brace. The substitutions at seventy-four minutes were tactical rather than desperate, and Andrews herself came off in stoppage time after a remarkable individual performance.
There are no possession figures or expected goals to analyse here, and frankly, they wouldn't tell you anything new. The scoreline says it all — four goals against a side that has lost every game this season. Durham's defence looked unorganised, Sheffield United's attack looked sharp, and the gap between them was never going to close without a significant shift in personnel.
We had Durham winning at forty-four per cent confidence before kick-off, and well, that prediction has gone to seed. The problem was simple — Durham have nothing to lose and everything to prove, and Sheffield United, despite their own struggles, had more quality on the pitch. The recent form of both sides suggested a tight contest, but quality still wins matches, and Andrews ensured it did.
