Fifty years of penalty shootouts

Philip Whitaker reflects on the data and the drama over fifty years of Blades penalty shootouts.

Most of our articles are published on Mondays (free) and Fridays (paid). Now this one…this one is different. A bonus shootout special for all paid subs:

We’ve been looking forward to publishing this for a long while now, waiting for the right moment, for time and opportunity to collide. With the potential for extra-time and penalties in this evening’s game against Wrexham, we thought “this is it!”. So here’s the deepest of dives into a murky corner of Sheffield United history…the penalty shootout.

Words: Philip Whitaker

Most Blades think we are rubbish at penalty shootouts. Well, recency bias and losing both shootouts in the end-of-season play-offs might have a lot to do with this. We are currently on our worst-ever run of form, having lost the last six on the trot. From Highbury (the one at Fleetwood) to the City Ground and Turf Moor, we have lost them all. At the Lane, we are no better, with six successive defeats since the last shootout victory over seventeen years ago, including to Leicester’s kids.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. We have won shootouts in Africa and Gibraltar and have even managed to win two on the same day. One Scottish defender scored all his six attempts, and another sealed United’s last victory seven years ago. In 2014, Mark Howard even saved a penalty from a West Ham striker who scored the opening goal of the 2022 World Cup! 

History of the shootout

In the FA Cup, before the advent of the shootout, there were endless replays. In European competitions, when a replay wasn’t possible, the game was decided by a coin toss. Perhaps we should have just stuck to this, as I’m pretty sure Billy Sharp has quite a good record of winning the toss in the centre circle. 

The first penalty shootout in a professional game in England was in the semi-final of the Watney Cup at Boothferry Park on 5th August 1970 as Manchester United knocked out Hull City. George Best scored the first, while Denis Law became the first to have his penalty saved. Meanwhile, the Blades were losing the other semi-final at the Baseball Ground 0-1 to Derby, who beat Man Utd 4-1 in the final.   

Blades are better than England

Overall, we have been involved in 30 penalty shootouts – winning 14 and losing 16 (46.7% success rate), so perhaps the last six losses are just a regression towards the mean. It’s a better record than Wednesday, who have only won five from 13 (38%) over the past 20 years.  

England also have a worse record, having only won three penalty shootouts from ten (30% success rate). Two of those wins came recently (versus Colombia in the 2018 World Cup and the 2019 Nations League third place play-off versus Switzerland). However, even England’s dismal run of five successive defeats from Euro 1996 to Euro 2012 can’t match United’s current run.   

United’s Record

We have taken 158 penalties and scored 113, which gives a success rate of 72%, marginally below the xG - the quality of a chance by calculating the likelihood that it will be scored from a particular position - of 0.76 for a penalty. Meanwhile, our fifteen goalkeepers have saved 26 and conceded 118, saving 22% of the penalties that were on target.   

There are probably only 4 of our 30 shootouts that stick in the memory for being truly defining. These were the two FA Cup Quarter Final victories at the Lane in 1993 and 1998 and two play-off defeats in 2012 and 2022. Most of the rest are forgettable and somewhat inconsequential, but let me remind you of them all.

Every.

Single.

One.