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Posted: April 22nd 2009
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Forum and blog activity is frantic at the moment as home boys galvanise their teams’ last-gasp efforts and rival supporters stray far and wide to goad or to incite via the wonderful www.

Wolves fans are wishing us well, Blouse fans putting the finger up. It’s that time of the season for either blind passion or, in my case unbridled and passionate caution and despair. Things are like that for us because people have come to expect it from us. One of the most commonly-levelled criticisms in Sheffield, especially from the Wendies, is that we Bladesmen constantly moan, are pessimistic even when things are going well, live constantly on the dark side, always believe things will go belly up and refuse to enjoy success until it has been proven . . . . even when you’ve gone up, when you’re promoted, when you’re top of the tree, you know, there’s really only one way to go.

You only have to listen to Praise or Grumble – South Yorkshire’s premier post-match bitch-fest on BBC Radio Sheff – to hear Tykes, Spireites, Rovers and Owls slag us off for moaning while the sun’s shining.

They call us the glass-half-empty-brigade (GHEB).

Though they’re occasionally guilty of it themselves, they believe Unitedites are predisposed towards pessimistic soul-searching, jumping off the edge or, as the police have always fondly referred to suicide, scoring an own goal. I think it stems from the fact that, of all the teams covered by the radio station, we have the most successful heritage, so rivals believe we have no right to cry into our beer, especially when things are so good . . . .relatively speaking. Reading my previous musings this season you’ll already know that, although I’m loyal through and through, I do like to keep one foot in the GHEB camp.

And so does a bloke currently haunting the BBC 606 Sheffield United forum.  All season long now he’s been knocking Blackwell and specific players. All season long his detractors have come back at him and generally lost their rag. He appears to have some limited knowledge of previous players and games and talks fluently about current tactics and personnel, though readily admits he doesn’t go to many matches because, he says, he refuses to give credence to the rubbish that calls itself football on our side of the city. He calls himself GC.

It was no surprise then that 10 minutes from time at Turf Moor, it was GC who logged on to announce in typical inflammatory mode: “The season’s Over” . United’s 1-0 defeat at the hands of  play-off chasers Burnley signalling, in GC’s mind, the end of our world as we know it. Ironically, his first reply was from a bloke on the terraces at Turf Moor (trawling the web and replying whilst at the match? – I saw it on Sky and it wasn’t that bad, a point picked up by GC in his retort to the angry response)

Over recent months GC’s been increasingly dismissed as a Wendy. Bloggers urge Blades not to respond, not to feed the flames of someone who’s simply winding us up in the guise of being one of the Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane faithful. He’s become the target of hateful and incendiary replies and his outpourings lead to threads which threaten physical violence. It’s all going a bit Pete Tong.

It’s an interesting phenomenon though – the frustrated fan who feels the ground’s not right; the manager’s the wrong bloke; half the players don’t care; the other half are not good enough; the wrong players are sold, the wrong ones bought, money is misspent; tactics are non-existent; the pies are cold; why do we bother; what’s it all for; what’s it all about . . . .Alfred.

Take one step back from the all-consuming passion that is football and this type of fan can be viewed simply as a figure of fun, a geezer who lives on his own or with his mother, attends monster truck rallies in Derbyshire and desperately wants Kylie to be his Facebook friend. He’s probably unsuccessful in life and begrudges happiness wherever he, or she, sees it.

I wouldn’t say in any way that I agree with GC’s extremisms and recent glaring inconsistencies have eroded any authority his words may once have carried, but I find the idea fascinating that a fan is not tolerated if he dares to suggest that the runaway train is only going so fast because it’s brakes don’t work and it’s on the wrong track anyway.

A small part of me feels some empathy with the ‘nowt’s right’ view of the club only because I myself went into the wilderness for a while during the Bassett years at Bramall Lane. Though there is a fondness for him in Sheffield, I stayed away as much as I could because I disagreed with everything about the man and his style. I was delighted at the back-to-back promotions and the Premier League status but the battling style only ever takes you so far – it was never sustainable.

One thing the mysterious GC and I may have in common is that we may be ‘of the same era’. Our delivery into the beautiful world may well have been a birth into a United sitting pretty in fifth place in England’s top tier with promises of European football and a style admired as free flowing and creative. If you accept that, for some men, their psychologies are interwoven with the success or failure of their football club, then the last 40 years have not really added up to much and maybe GC too has not fulfilled his potential.

Viewed against the success of the great teams of their own club’s past, I suspect many fans would happily push the majority of their current squad under an oncoming bus and not turn a hair, but that’s not the point. We don’t live in the past, there is a new reality and we must accept our place in it whilst constantly striving to do better.

I think GC is wrong in what he says because there are always positives but he can’t see them. It’s just interesting to watch the reaction.

Despite the battle of Turf Moor I live in hope but stand by everything I’ve said so far and will probably be an occasional member of the glass-half-empty-brigade until things really start to improve.  Automatic would be lovely, play-offs would be fine – but I’ve been there before and it’s a lottery.

Still, it stops me thinking about work for a while.