Forget Tevez, forget Tim Howard, forget Liverpool’s second X1, forget the rested Reds, forget the barristers and forget Sharpe’s march to Parliament. . . we simply weren’t good enough.
No matter how loud you shout, no-one hears you scream in the Championship.
Those wrapped up in the machinations of the appeal process seem to have forgotten that a 3-0 defeat away at Aston Villa eight days before the final day of the season effectively sealed our fate. Had we been ‘professional’, ie. closed down the match and played for a 0-0 draw, I wouldn’t be writing this now.
It’s almost inexplicable though isn’t it? A final home match – so much riding on a fixture; money, prestige, survival, careers, sanity, alcoholism, manic depression. And your boys meekly accept second place in a two-horse race. From a supporter’s point of view, they’ve each failed to match your own passion, obsession and motivation. That disappointment alone is hard to bear.
And yet it’s the players who really suffer. For the journeymen, May 13 represented a career peak from which they will slide inexorably down the divisions into the non-league abyss that is the Unibond Jewson Everest Double Glazing Northern League B. For the talented few it was a hiccup and they will hold their breath now until the dust settles.
But my depression lies much deeper than the D-Day disappointment.
Thankfully, I’m old and wise enough to put the season into context. I’ve been down to the old Div 4 (where, incidentally, I had the most enjoyable football supporter’s season of my life) so I know where desolation lives, I’ve got its address in my diary.
But the yo-yo clubs for the last six years are following a depressing pattern of behaviour, the root of which lies beyond bad managers, demotivated players and disconsolate fans.
As a reporter some years ago I once covered a Nottingham Forest finance meeting. I remember one comment from the then finance office which has stayed with me through the years. Under extreme duress from emotional shareholders he was forced to admit that the financial structure of the club, bearing in mind ground capacity, playing staff etc was that of a Championship club and that promotion would, and I quote: “cause more problems than it solved”.
In one flashing moment I saw football through his hard fiscal eyes, stripped bare of all its beautiful inconsistencies, spontaneity, chaos and anarchy. For him, promotion represented an unwelcome growth spurt which would see the club struggle to live beyond its means, forced to grow too fast to meet the demands of the top flight. For him, football at that level, with its soaring costs and a wage bill held hostage by the vagaries of team performances, would be tantamount to financial suicide with fans on the sidelines urging him into desperate transactions which, he said, would lay him open to charges of financial mismanagement.
No supporter ever wants to hear that.
It’s like buying a cheap TV from Asda which says on the box: “This is an average TV which we’re bringing to you at such an incredibly low price that many of the components inside are working, worthy and minimalist but not reliable and the contrast knob may fall off at any moment.”
Whatever positive platitudes the manager manages on the back pages of the pre-season evening paper, no supporter wants to hear that it’s going to be a quiet season; that we’ll be lucky to stay up and that injured players will have to be supplemented by cheap loan deals. No supporter wants to hear that their club is being run as a business of a pre-determined size with all the limitations that that size imposes.
Forest’s accountant went on to list similar clubs in the same financial position and included the Blades among them. I was furious. But therein lies the nub. We once-proud, big city, yo-yo clubs are businesses being run, very sensibly, on the projected income and expenditure of football’s second tier. Promotion is grudgingly accepted by the money men but must be financed either through a kamikaze spending spree on a wing-and-a-prayer balance sheet (which may never add up), or, as the Blades did, a steady-as-she-goes shopping list with an eye out for the buy-one-get-one-free and the cut-price sales.
So we kept our heads financially and went down.
Disappointed as I am, I can’t find it in my heart to be angry with the Blades Plc. My daughter’s own personal merchandise spree has played a key part in a healthy operating profit, a revitalized ground (with an albeit tiny increase in capacity), a season-average crowd of 30,000 plus for the first time in decades and the prospect, hopefully, of an exciting season trying to get back up.
According to the chairman, great strides have been made this season. The club has spread the financial load more widely to counter balance the football club. Other benefits are less apparent to the casual observer. I’ve seen many more children at the Lane this season and so a new generation of eager young Blades has been blooded with the cut and thrust of a Premiership chase – kids who will ‘support’ the club into future campaigns.
For many of us, football support is simply about the journey. I’m not sure what I’d do if we ever arrived. I am literally Waiting for Godot – but in my case he’s a French second division striker with a bad back. For another season my enjoyment will have to be in the journey, travelling towards a Premiership which I have to believe is always a possibility.
It’s a journey which is perennially pregnant with exciting possibilities. And no matter what disasters preceded the summer break and no matter what I say in the pub between now and August, it’s a thrill ride which I’ll join again this autumn. No doubt I’ll seek out the new fixtures and bizarrely consider going on some pre-season tour of Norway or Torquay. I could never see my support as a business transaction.
It’s been a wonderful season and yes, it was all worthwhile. We scrapped and fought and played too rarely like the ghosts of players past. But the buzz never left the Lane and the thrill of the visit of old rivals, world-famous players and high-profile television coverage, sustained a prolonged ecstasy.
I shall be fascinated to watch Reading’s progress this year. For in their hands lies Sheffield United’s and many of our futures. With Wigan’s last-gasp escape fresh in our minds we have to believe that a good Championship side can sustain a long-term Premiership life and become more than just another yo-yo Championship business.
If not, then the Uniteds of this world, and you know who you are, shackled by the prudence of their accountants, will forever bobble up and down in the quicksand that lies between the top two divisions.
