blades blog A little bit of the Mediterranean in downtown Sheffield

Posted: August 13th 2008
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I promised, as I always do, that I wouldn’t get excited, that I wouldn’t pour all my energies into a new season, that I wouldn’t flog myself to death worrying about fixtures and injuries and rivals’ strengths and weaknesses. And above all that I wouldn’t be so obsessed with the Prem.

But then I was in Sheffield on business, travelling from A to B and decided, as I invariably do, to go via Sheffield 2.  And before very long there I was pulling into the Bramall Lane car park, drawn to the magnet, sucked in against my better judgement like a chip-shop fly to the ultra-violet light, to the womb-like comfort of my football club headquarters.

Resistance was hopeless. I drank in the atmosphere and trembled like the recovering alcoholic who eyes an unopened bottle of booze. And so another season begins . . .

To my horror though, the newly-completed Copthorne Hotel now dominates my favourite corner of the ground (just why is it that clubs have to build hotels, casinos, supermarkets and enterprise centres to sit at each corner like Prince Charles’ proverbial architectural carbuncles? Incorporate them into new designs yes, but don’t stick them on as afterthoughts 100 years later). The hotel now obscures an early glimpse of the ground from one direction. I nearly always use the same approach to the ground, the same one me and my dad used over the last 40 years. We’d walk down Woodhead Road and all the time you were walking down the road you could glance to your left and see the John Street Stand slowly filling with people pre kick-off. My dad used to say I almost began to run at this point terrified there’d be no room for us at the match or it would start early. But commerce has intervened and robbed me of another memory and stuck a ruddy great hotel on the corner of what I always thought was a compact and cosy ground.

Anyway, quietly and modestly, the red half of Sheffield believes we’ve got it made this year. The Cold War Robson era is a healing scar wound, a bitter memory soothed by Glasnost Blackwell and the latter half of last season gives Blades’ renewed hope, yet again, of a serious assault on Mount Premiership (where we would still be now had it not been for West Sham . . . I know we should get it over it but it’s hard ok?)

The additions of Sun Jihai, David Cotterill, Darius Henderson, Greg Halford from Sunderland and Matthew Spring from Luton  and the return to fitness of Jon Stead and particularly Danny Webber, can be seen as consolidation. Holding on to Beattie though is what most Blades believed was the acid test of the seriousness of the club’s promotion push. Currently on his way back from a knee op, I think we’ll miss him sorely in these opening fixtures. In my opinion he’s not the complete player but he’s more than enough to trouble Championship defences.

As usual with United these days, there’s been more activity behind the scenes rather than stunning new signings (no disrespect to the incomers) with yet another international link-up, this time with the Mediterranean Island of Malta. This will see the Blades develop an academy and players over there and gives us the somewhat dubious honour of wearing club shirts emblazoned this year with VisitMalta.com.

This of course adds to our previous bids at world domination/empire building/shameless digging for new players with our ownership, or collaborative partnership, with clubs in China, Hungary and Australia. The only problem is that I’ve seen precious little evidence yet of any great playing advantages to add to what the finance boys call ‘obvious commercial advantages’ although the Maltese national keeper has signed for us as our number 3 in goal. We’ve also appointed an international sports marketing expert and a new exec director who was formerly MD of Manchester United International. They are apparently going to help us build the global Blades brand, whatever that really means.

I worry though, and I wouldn’t be a true supporter if I didn’t, about the Championship Promotion Model which relies to any degree on ageing pros in key positions who provided they remain injury-free and help achieve promotion, have to be immediately replaced or sidelined in the wake of the champagne celebrations. Our reliance on Speed in the middle and Gillespie as the wide man, who have a combined age of 320, gives me cause for concern. If I were Beattie I’d be mightily worried about where my airborne service was coming from - please Sir Alex can we have Lee Martin back on loan?