On-loan Levi’s had last word but Slav’s keeping calm head
SLAVISA JOKANOVIC insisted there is no panic after the Terriers’ late smash-and-grab left his blunt Blades in the bottom three.
Billy Sharp looked to have salvaged a point with a stoppage-time leveller at Bramall Lane.
But Town’s on-loan Chelsea defender Levi Colwill grabbed a dramatic winner.
United have scored just once in more than six hours of Championship football and already trail fancied Fulham and West Brom – who came down with them in May – by nine points.
Jokanovic said: “It’s not the start to the season we or our fans wanted and it’s a really hard result to take.
“After we scored I thought there was still time to win it so it was a hard moment for us to lose.
“If I said this was the best performance in my time here and it still ended in a defeat to Huddersfield it sounds a bit like a joke.
“It’s a strange game and I must try to find positives.
“We have to stay calm, work hard and try to turn it around.”
After a turbulent last two years, the Terriers are the perfect warning to the Blades of being unable to halt a spiral of decline after crashing out of the Premier League.
They came to South Yorkshire to grind out a point but came away with all three thanks to another Blades no-show.
Sheffield United’s £40million strikeforce
of Rhian Brewster and Oli McBurnie were again forced to feed on scraps.
McBurnie’s spectacular 15-yard overhead kick which Lee Nicholls scrambled round the post low to his right was the stand-out moment in a turgid first-half. It took 40 minutes for the Blades to muster that effort, with Town’s back five stifling most of the few serious attacks.
The visitors came more into it in the second half, with Josh Koroma and substitute Fraizer Campbell both wasting chances before Koroma broke the deadlock with 15 minutes left.
He followed up to score from 10 yards after Wes Foderingham saved his initial effort from a Sorba Thomas cross.
But the hosts thought they had salvaged a point when Sharp came off the bench to fire home David McGoldrick’s knock-down.
However, there was more drama as Colwill grabbed his first career goal in the fourth minute of added time from sub Harry Toffolo’s cross when the Blades failed to clear a corner.
Town head coach Carlos Corberan, who revealed striker Jordan Rhodes faces months out with a back injury, said: “As the game wore on we felt we could exploit things on the counter-attack.
“It’s a really positive result and to win it the way we did after conceding so late shows the character there is in the side.”
SHEFFIELD UNITED: Foderingham 5; Basham 6, Egan 5, Davies 5; Baldock
6, Berge 5, Norwood 5, Fleck 5 (McGoldrick 78th), Norrington-Davies 6 (Osborn 77th); Brewster 5 (Sharp (65th)
7), McBurnie 5
HUDDERSFIELD: Nicholls 7; Pearson
7, Sarr 6, Colwill 8; Turton 6, High 6 (Toffolo (60th) 7), Hogg 7, O’Brien 7, Thomas 7; Koroma 8 (Vallejo 81st), Ward 3 (Campbell (60th) 6)
STAR MAN: Levi Colwill
REF: M Salisbury