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A long way back for Sheffield United, but can they make it?

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Nigel CloughEight years ago this week, England completed a World Cup fixture double-header by defeating Poland 2-1 to cement their place at the top of UEFA Group 6, and conclude a convincing qualifying campaign for the 2006 tournament in Germany.

When the domestic programme re-commenced the following Saturday, Sheffield United, in front of 25,533 supporters at their raucous Bramall Lane home, beat Wolverhampton Wanderers by virtue of a single Neil Shipperley goal. 

That victory triggered a run in which the side didn’t lose for eight games.  When the Blades hosted Crystal Palace for the season’s final match – another one goal triumph – promotion was already secured, and a team containing a blend of skill, physicality, and dependability, based around men such as; Phil Jagielka, Michael Tonge, Paddy Kenny, Paul Ifill and Chris Morgan was bound for the Premier League.

Four years on, and with England’s place at the South African World Cup finals of 2010 already assured, the national team lost an inconsequential tie in Ukraine.  Sheffield United resumed business a week later with an inauspicious 3-1 beating at the hands of Scunthorpe United.  The ensuing mini-slump – subsequent clashes against Blackpool, Cardiff City, and Newcastle United all ended with the Blades pointless – contributed significantly to the side finishing the campaign five points outside the Championship play-off spots.

That United were back in English football’s second tier owed much to the ill fortune which has, in modern times, perennially beset this fiercely proud 124 year-old club.  The Blades attacked their top-flight stay with all the gusto one would expect of a team playing under the charge of the forcible Neil Warnock.

A playing pool short of the necessary breadth of quality, though, would catch up with United, and they ran out of steam at the wrong time, winning only two of their closing 10 matches.  Needing just a point to survive, and up against fellow strugglers, Wigan Athletic, on the season’s final day, the Blades were beaten 2-1 despite playing the final quarter-of-an-hour against ten men.

Notwithstanding that crushing, rain-lashed afternoon in Yorkshire, it is the impact that Carlos Tevez had on the fate of a West Ham United side, also mired in trouble at the foot of the table, which riles all concerned with Sheffield United to this day.  The eminent Argentine forward’s late term burst of form, allied to his collection of significant goals – chiefly, the lone strike in a decisive concluding win at Manchester United, was integral to the Hammers ending up 3 points and three places ahead of Warnock’s team.

West Ham were subsequently fined £5.5m when it was revealed, that contrary to F.A. rules, Tevez’s  economic rights were owned by two third party companies, namely Media Sports Investments and Just Sports Inc.  The Upton Park club, though, escaped the point deduction that would have resulted in the Blades living to fight another Premier League day.

It is a blow from which the club have never truly recovered.   Warnock ended his seven-and-a-half year tenure days after relegation was confirmed.  Kevin Blackwell came close to renewing United’s top-flight membership when he steered the team to a play-off final in 2009 only for a Burnley outfit, that had finished the regular season four points worse off than their adversaries, to win a Wembley ‘War of the Roses’ battle and condemn the Blades to another year of Championship football.

Regardless of the pain experienced by the Yorkshiremen in London that May Bank Holiday, a retrospective view, taken this week, of a United team on the verge of Premier League football and containing the blossoming talent of Kyle Walker and Kyle Naughton, will surely add to the angst at Bramall Lane concerning the alarming slump that has since occurred.

By the summer of 2011, Sheffield United, having for varying reasons seen men of Billy Sharp, James Harper and Leon Britton’s ilk slip out of the door, had plummeted into League One.  During a chaotic relegation year, promising young boss Gary Speed departed mid-season to take the top job with the Wales national team.  Speed’s replacement, Micky Adams, appeared to be the perfect fit.  A lifelong Blades fanatic, and a man with a strong managerial reputation – what could go wrong?  Everything.

Adams won 4 of his twenty-four matches at the helm, the side ended six points adrift of safety, and were then dealt one final indignity.  What would transpire to be the club’s last second-tier fixture to this day took them to Swansea City.  The cock-a-hoop Swans, with their play-off berth in the bag, routed the visitors 4-0 with Britton adding the coup de grace by delivering a 90th minute goal.

An agonising, elongated penalty shoot-out failure against Huddersfield United, in another Wembley promotion decider, thwarted the Blades’ attempt to escape League One at the first time of asking.  Twelve months later Yeovil Town overcame United over a two-legged play-off semi-final.

The on-pitch pattern has been one of steady decline, but few observers can have foreseen that, by mid-October this year, Sheffield United would be rooted to the foot of a division they are widely expected to escape at the top end.  Moreover, in true Blades’ fashion, they hit rock bottom in front of the nation’s TV cameras, and by losing to a team, Coventry City, whose own dire predicament arguably surpasses that of any Football League outfit.

Additionally, their nadir came two days after David Weir had become the latest manager to be ousted from the Sheffield United dugout.  The cerebral Scot knew he was confronted with a formidable task when, in June, he took on the challenge of reviving an increasingly ailing force.  There were, though, grounds for optimism, when the former Everton defender took up his maiden managerial post.

Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia, with a personal wealth estimated in the billions, purchased a 50% stake in the club at the campaign’s outset, and arrived with the stated intention of establishing Sheffield United back in the Premier League.

After one win in their opening eleven league matches – that coming on the season’s first day – any thoughts pertaining to a double promotion can, presently, best be described as a distant dream.  Weir looked to have recruited shrewdly.  Jose Baxter, Lyle Taylor, Ryan Hall, Conor Coady, Marlon King, Florent Cuvelier, and Harry Bunn would all be coveted by the vast majority of League One bosses.

The existence of the (not so) ‘Financial Fair Play’ rules renders debatable whether or not the newly ingrained joint-chairman’s monetary power will provide any short-term boon for his club.  There will be no imminent cash boost supplied by a cup run – miserable home losses against Scunthorpe and Hartlepool United respectively having brought an abrupt halt to League Cup and Football League Trophy progress.

It is far from a lost cause however.  There is precedent at this enigmatic club for oscillating from despair to delirium.

In this week, when England must overcome Poland at Wembley to guarantee their spot at next year’s Brazilian World Cup, there has predictably been a deal of reminiscing on events of 40 years previous, and the Jan Tomaszewski inspired Polish side which denied Alf Ramsay’s men the chance to travel to West Germany in 1974.

Days after the goalkeeper – derided by Brian Clough as ‘a circus clown in gloves’ – had resisted nearly everything an England team, which included Sheffield United’s Tony Currie, could throw at him, and consequently earned his nation a 1-1 draw in London, the Blades were back in top-flight action against Manchester City.  It was a season at United which featured the toppling of Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and, most emphatically, a 5-0 thumping of Arsenal.  Seven years later, in August 1981, Bramall Lane played host to Hereford United as Ian Porterfield’s reign began with his new club playing in Division Four.

Remarkably, a further nine years on, Dave Bassett had completed the Blades march back to the elite.  No less astonishing, was that a team which didn’t record its first win under December 22nd recovered to the extent that, on their top-tier return, they ended up in 13th place.

Inevitably, when relegation did befall Bassett’s men in 1994, the circumstances were the most heart-breaking imaginable.  With a draw sufficient to avoid the drop, the Blades – having led twice – were beaten by Mark Stein’s last gasp winning goal for a Chelsea side that was playing for nothing more than pride.

This is a football club that specialises in suffering.

A David Hopkin wonder goal – not a sentence that you will have read very often – with only seconds left on the clock, won the 1997 First Division (now Championship) play-off final at the expense of a Howard Kendall led United.  When the Blades sought to make amends a year later, they were stymied by a Sunderland team that overcame a 2-1 first-leg deficit to win through a play-off semi-final.

Indeed, semi-finals are a particularly sore topic among the steadfast Sheffield United fan-base.  In 2003, Liverpool squeezed past the Yorkshiremen at that stage of the League Cup.  The F.A. Cup of the same year brought similar last-four anguish – a David Seaman wonder save, and some typically erratic officiating by Graham Poll, helped Arsenal to a one goal win at Old Trafford over a Blades team that would pay a heavy price for their terrific cup form.  When they came to contest a play-off final against Wolves, Neil Warnock’s men were on their last legs and subsided to a comprehensive defeat.

A group of supporters that has sat through its team losing an F.A Cup semi-final to their bitter rivals, as United’s did in 1993 when they watched Sheffield Wednesday win a Wembley Steel City derby, has within it the collective character to endure any ensuing hurt that football can inflict.  To an outsider, Sheffield United’s loyal following transmits a vibe that suggests they are wholly absorbed by their club’s every deed and, whether good or bad, the team’s exploits are rarely dull.

It is impossible to foretell what fate awaits the Blades across the next eight years, leading up to the occasion of England beating Poland to qualify for their World Cup winning campaign in 2022.

More certain, is that whoever picks up the managerial baton from Weir – Nigel Clough is the overwhelming favourite for the job (at the time of writing) – will benefit from having thousands of ardent Blades in his corner.  He also has a ready gem on who to base his plans – Harry Maguire, a fine young centre-back who was instrumental to the club’s fledglings reaching 2011’s F.A. Youth Cup final.

These might be small crumbs at the moment, and it’s a long way back, but no football club is better versed in exactly what is required to ride the punches and come out fighting.

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  • Glenn says:

    Its dark days at the moment for us but if we bring in pulis I think that is the best option he has managed at the highest level on a tight budget u cant play pretty football at this level you have to power your way out big lad upfront etc etc and pulis knows this system well he did it at stoke warnock operated a similar system for us but I wouldnt want him back because hes been to leeds utd enough said

  • Looch says:

    Fantastic article! Being a Blade has always been one big roller coaster… I wouldn’t change it for the world !! UTB

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