It’s time for a clear-out or a war.

Just as, in times of growing social unrest, poverty, urban violence and increasing crime, the clarion call comes for the reinstatement of National Service and a third world war, so the roundball community calls for managerial heads and wholesale change.

There’s been revolution in the air of Sheffield 2 ever since the ‘we wuz robbed’ drop from the Premiership last season. We’re all secretly seething, squirming in our seats in quiet desperation wishing all ills on West Ham and impatiently craving renewed success.

It doesn’t help when The Times carries a feature (P92 09.02.08) on what the Premiership table would have looked like last season had shots that hit the woodwork actually gone in. Every woodwork shot counts as an extra point.

Basically, this perversion of the truth would have had no effect on the title or second place but it would have lifted the Blades two places in the league and sent Fulham down instead.

Then came Bramall Lane’s Life of Bryans. With Robson and Kidd in charge great things were promised but the appointment of the former was not heralded with street parties or celebrations – his later managerial career preceded him.

But this was Captain Courageous, Captain Marvel, big-hearted Bry, the hard man, a player with medals and trophies and titles and a man with an OBE. Surely, the argument went, some of the Ferguson magic will have rubbed off on one of the most capped men of England. But more of the Atkinson magic appears to have found its way into the Robson psyche and the Sheffield United board autopsy on Robbo’s Sheffield sojourn will conclude: Cause of death – Former Great Player Syndrome or FGPS.

One truism that all football chairmen need to keep tattooed on their cheque books is that it’s rare to find a direct correlation between great footballers and great managers (Cruyff and Rijkaard perhaps but they have everything they need to succeed). In fact you’re more likely to find a strong link between players who underachieved on the field and went on to success on the touchline (Jose Mourinho). But if you’ve just parted company with a manager who professed a lifelong love of his childhood club and you need a name to fill the void, then chairmen will forever be tempted by a talented former international.

Robson’s record with Boro stands up to scrutiny – let’s be fair to the man – but his later stints as boss at West Brom should have sounded, if not alarm bells, then a faintly annoying buzzing in the ears.

He struggled from the beginning and it wasn’t long before the knives were out. The Blades needed sharpening and even some of Neil Warnock’s fiercest critics could be found hollering from the back of the Kop in thick South Yorkshire drawl: “For God’s sake bring back Waaaaarnock.” As a measure of serious considerations for the future of SUFC Plc this advice fell on deaf ears but you didn’t need a McNuggets GCSE to sense that poor Bryan’s career hung by expensive threads.

Disastrous results interspersed with jammy wins kept him in post longer than most thought he should have been. We were up and down like Mantovani’s left elbow, as my granddad would say, but he lost to the old foe and that’s a heinous crime on the Sharrow side of Sheffield.

Robson’s Super Tuesday came in the evening home tie with Watford when the voters made their feelings plain. The most obvious indication of a football manager’s delicacy of tenure always seeps like a weeping wound from the terraces. That’s where the final diagnosis will be delivered.

First there was the eerie silence then an unusually high level of discontented chit-chat. Regulars debated the relative merits of every corner and throw-in. Outstretched hands stabbed through the floodlit night to point out a better pass to a wide man. All round the Kop people raised both arms heavenwards as if to demand the Greek god of freekicks deliver something slightly less obvious than current offerings.

And then came the substitution. It’s 1-1 and we’re a quarter of an hour away from perhaps sneaking a victory we simply don’t deserve. Up goes the electronic board, off goes a striker and on comes . . . a left back. There was a brushweed moment as 23,000 people took in the enormity of the lack of desire and then came the embarrassingly and excruciatingly loud cry from all four corners of the ground: “You don’t know what you’re doing”.

That stretchy, elastic bond between us and him had just snapped and he might as well have left the ground there and then. The power we had to humiliate this man by shouting at him was awesome and I suddenly felt sorry for him. Imagine cocking up right royally at work and the entire office standing up, pointing and singing “You don’t know what you’re doing”.

And so, somewhat controversially, I find myself asking was it really all Bryan’s fault? Deep under the ultra-thin and diseased veneer of the fickle fan maybe there’s more at fault here than the man at the helm, even though he must understandably bear the collective responsibility of his office.

At first he told us all he was trying to make the squad adapt to a different style of play (passing the ball along the ground) but then said some of the inherited squad were incapable of doing that so he asked those that can to pass the ball and those that can’t to stick to the long ball game, loved and loathed in equal measure by the red and white side of Sheffield. The result was a mess and the inevitable occurred. But he was ostensibly right, most of the players could not adapt to a style of play which would, in my humble opinion, have increased our chances of making and sustaining a leap back into the Premiership.

And so former lower league keeper and Warnock protégée Kevin Blackwell stepped into the breach until the end of the season. He played a pivotal role in supporting Mr W during the great 2002-03 campaign of the League and FA Cup semis and play-off final. But surely Bryan’s problem is still Kevin’s – how do you stop a backward slide with a squad made up of old pros, steady talent, youthful energy and enthusiasm and Championship journeymen?

You can keep botch repair an old roof but eventually it needs entirely replacing. Isn’t it better to ‘buy’ into or employ a style of play which you believe will be both successful and entertaining, then employ the right person to establish that style and allow him, or her (controversial but Hilary Clinton may soon be free) to ship out those who are not able to adapt and start afresh.

Of course this would be a long-term investment and what trigger-happy chairman has the time and patience to wait for success set against a context of car park demonstrations and hate mail delivered to your daughter at her secondary school. It’s not realistic to expect fans to walk away from a 3-0 home drubbing and say: “Yes, but we’ve invested in the future and things will all become clear in the 2012/13 season”.

I remember once the late Ian Porterfield telling the Sheffield Star in a pre-season interview that this was to be a steady-as-she-goes season for his Blades side where a mid-table finish would constitute success. Season ticket sales suffered, casual fans voted with their feet and there was a season-long passionless air of mediocrity. Twenty years later and the pressure has increased ten-fold; Championship managers deemed to have done well if they survive a second season in charge.

A Blades chapter has ended and another one must begin. Aware that contacting and networking is a vital part of player purchasing, the United Board are planning a high-profile appointment as the Lane’s Director of Football (bit of a contradiction at the moment). McClaren, Venables and Taylor are all touted as being ‘in the frame’ but at least it’s a step in the right direction and proof that such appointments are not just the prerogative of the so-called big clubs.

If I had a voice, if I made a difference, if I was listened to, I would make my heartfelt plea for chairmen to invest in a five-year plan based on a style of play, employ the best man or woman for the job and dare to give them a contract for the full term in office. Then I would spend time and money explaining my philosophy to the fans. I’d let them have a vote on who they would like to see in the job, I’d ask them how they’d like us to play. I’d listen to their views without being blindfolded or shackled by them.

But that’s unlikely to happen even in my dreams . . . so, as I said, we need a clear out or a war in order to start the exciting journey all over again.

In the meantime Bryan always look on the bright side of life and remember this:

“You’ll see it’s all a show
Keep 'em laughing as you go
Just remember that the last laugh is on you”