blades blog Sweaty assets in the season that never was

Posted: June 16th 2009
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• In factual terms it was a success – we achieved at least one of our goals by reaching the play-offs.
• In chief exec speak it was a failure – we didn’t bounce back to the Prem within the parachute payment deadline.
• And from a fans point of view it was like trying to eat a vanilla slice on a roller coaster – we made a bit of a mess of it.

As soon as it became clear that we were rising to the top of the pile I called us promotion pretenders, based on what I’d seen. I got slightly nervous about my pessimism as we successfully approached the play-offs, then almost got carried away on a wave of emotive subjectivism before realism kicked in again at Wembley. We weren’t good enough. Period.

As I’ve said before, the fact that we nearly pulled it off is more to do with the failings of the rest of the Championship than it is to do with anything we inherently did right. I don’t believe the promoted trio will pull up any trees save one of them managing to avoid relegation for a year or two.

The season began negatively and prophetically with us performing more than admirably at St Andrews and Kevin Phillips sticking in a speculative goal in the third and final minute of time added on. By such narrow margins are seasons won and lost. How ironic. How tragic. My nephew who went to the match joked on the phone on his way back: ‘wouldn’t it be a laugh if Philiips’ goal cost us promotion’  Oh how we laughed, oh how we’re not laughing anymore. Without that goal ourselves and Birmingham  would have been level on points a few weeks ago and we had the superior goal difference. That’s the beauty and the beast of football.

But of course you make your own good and bad luck and if you let it hinge on one result then you’ve only yourself to blame.

Despite notching up decent wins in the first half the season it was the tell-tale losses which suggested we might struggle, a home loss to Derby, an away defeat at Norwich, a home draw with Southampton and the defeat at Hillsborough. But these were only the hors d’oeuvre of defeat, as I oft muse on the Kop, and my belief in my lack of belief materialised as clearly as James Tiberius Kirk on the good ship Enterprise in December with home defeats to Reading, Wolves and Burnley all of whom had already stated their own case for a top-six finish. I’m a big fan of benchmarking among your peers so my pessimism plumbed new depths.

Despite all that, it’s New Year, we’re more than half way through the season and we’re 6th in a crowd of teams who never really strayed far from the top, bar Cardiff’s late fall away. So you go about your business and sing a happy tune knowing you’re at least a challenger.

Into 2009 and the season continued with the Blades running the cross country race of Championship promotion strongly but occasionally stumbling through the quagmire and losing touch with the leaders. So two league wins and two cup wins in January leads to talk of automatic promotion and then whoops . . . sideways into a cow pat with a defeat at home to Donny. Another win, another draw and then whoops . . . foot down a rabbit hole with a home defeat to Wednesday and they do the historic double. Never mind, keep on running.

Let me digress a moment to point out that for a Blade whatever’s happened in the season it’s never a good one when you’ve been overturned by the Pigs. Them doing the double hurt and prophetically showed us choking on ‘the big occasion’.  Whilst we’re at this point I might add that much of my carefully crafted and honed pessimism is melted in the white hot crucible of big occasion choking in which we excel. Take my hand briefly and let us look back over our shoulders towards recent history 

• 2009 Championship play-off final against Burnley
• 2007 Final game of the Premier League against Wigan
• 2003 Championship play-off final with Wolves
• 2003 FA Cup semi-final against Arsenal
• 2003 Worthington Cup semi-final against Liverpool
• 1998 FA Cup semi-final with Newcastle
• 1997 Div One play-off final against Crystal Palace
• 1993 the Sheffield FA Cup semi-final against Wednesday

Sixteen years, big games played at big venues. And we’ve coughed and choked on each and every occasion. Of course we’ve been promoted and enjoyed success but how different our recent history might have been if we’d fulfilled a tiny part of our potential. Those losses represent four missed seasons in the Premier League, three FA Cup Finals and a League Cup Final appearance, just since 1993.

Anyway, back to the season. We’re in February and then something strange happens. After losing at home to Wednesday on February 7, just a month after James BT has gone, and we manage to shut out the rest of the season by losing only once (away to Burnley mind) in the next 14 games!  What a performance! Not only did we not appear to miss poor James, it actually looks as if we achieved greater stability by being less solely reliant and we took a gigantic chink off the wage bill. But then there’s the goals.

James Beattie had already scored 12 league goals before he left back at the start of 2009. The fact that he remained top scorer despite not playing at the club for the rest of the season is dire. The fact that no-one else reached double figures is even direr and the fact that only two other players managed to score more than five league goals is direness on a scale previously only seen at international festivals of direness and poor quality.

A lack of goals and goal scorers is one of the hidden keys in our failure to get promoted. And it grieves me to see Rob Hulse and Jonathan Stead bag 27 between them to appear in the Championship top 20 scorers of the season.

United’s superior form in the second half of the season without Beattie is strange and perhaps better football minds than mine can work that one out but it would be dishonest to suggest that we didn’t miss his goal scoring prowess and ability to turn draws and defeats into sudden victories, whether they were deserved or not. That’s why you pay his wages.

We all know what happened at the end. We built ourselves up for a fall forgetting as we did that in playing Burnley our opponents had been the superior team during the season so why would it all suddenly change at Wembley. It was disappointing beyond belief but I was more embarrassed that we failed to make a contest of it. You can at least take a tiny crumb of comfort from a defeat where your team has performed heroically and gone up in the estimation of the average supporter.

So in considering our season I’m left in a hopeless limbo. We didn’t pull off a major relegation escape, we didn’t settle for mid-table mediocrity and we didn’t get promoted. We were the nearly boys. If we’d failed miserably we could have rebuilt, if we’d succeeded majestically then again we would have rebuilt but what do the nearly boys do? They either get asset stripped or hang on to their precious talents, round off the edges and strengthen the core for another climb up the hill.

And that’s where the positives kick in. I’m not going to wax lyrical anymore about Kyles Naughton and Walker in case Martin O’Neill reads this blog but attacking wing backs make my hairs stand on end and when they’re so young it seems positively utopian. I’d like to say we’ll get rid of the dead wood but I suspect we’ll get rid of the high earners and keep some of the dead wood to keep the home fires burning while we scrape the bottom of the coal bunker.

It’s a time of transition for every football club. The Tevez money will ease our pain in the current financial climate but the wage bill has been reduced amidst a league-wide growing unwillingness to take risks to get promoted. 20,000 season tickets have again been renewed or bought afresh which suggests appetites are still healthy. But warnings about downsizing last year are followed now by further exec-speak in the shape of United’s Chief Executive Jason Rockett who says we must “sweat our assets” in the coming 12 months, which I presume is yet another way of saying that more is expected from less.

Personally I don’t want to sweat my assets. I want to nurture and feed them and watch them grow but you know I’m just a fan. I’d be happy if in the opening game of the new season we manage to stop someone scoring in the third and final minute of time added on. Take it from me - by such narrow margins are seasons won and lost.