Category: sheffield

Where did all the good guys go?

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Short on time, but felt that this deserved (at least) some passing comment. It’s sportingintelligence.com’s Big 5 player producer analysis. By Big 5, they mean teams in top-flight clubs in Spain’s La Liga, England’s Premier League, Italy’s Serie A, Germany’s Bundesliga 1 and France’s Ligue 1 and by “producer”, they mean “spent 3 or more seasons developing players when aged between 15 and 21”.

It makes very interesting reading, especially the English table, which has Sheffield United at 14th place, ahead of 8 Premier League teams.

engpro1

(you’d be a fool to overlook the mighty Skelmersdale United in joint 40th as well)

It’s a good indication of the draw of the Premier League and the issues that plague smaller clubs. While the talent flows ever upwards, in search of money, fame, fortune and glory, there’s scant compensation for the little guys who have spent time and money developing the the players in question. Sheffield United’s academy regularly provides 3 of the back 4 for England’s national team, but we’re still strapped for cash and disappointingly languishing at the wrong end of League 1.

I can only hope that we rise again to our natural haunt in the Premier League and become one of those clubs which pillage the talent of the lower league clubs, as soon as possible.

I’ll Just Leave This Here

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Treating the blog to bit of footy after a long-overdue “good weekend” for my beloved Sheffield United.

Featuring a Man of the Match performance which has put Ryan Flynn’s talent neatly on display just in time for the January transfer window.
Oh no, here we go again… 🙁 

Sheffield’s “Cavern of weirdness”

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Just thought I’d better drop this here for my Sheffield readers – and also for me to go back and have a proper look at when I have a moment. It’s a piece in the Guardian by Owen Hatherley voicing his displeasure at the closure of the Castle Market: Sheffield’s “Cavern of Weirdness”.

This multilevel market, with its collection of individual stalls, shops and stands, was unlike anything else in the city, or anywhere else – a 1960s dreamworld, a cornucopia, a maze of surprises, delights and, occasionally, shocks.

This isn’t what I remember it for. My memories are of an always dirty, unpleasant and occasionally dangerous place at the bottom end of town. But each to our own.

Hatherley describes the change of premises into an office district with an open air market at the centre of it as:

a good measure of current priorities: the destruction of genuinely unique and genuinely public spaces, for a mixture of nondescript heritage and rampant speculation.

But I’d rather have a business district generating revenue and accolades for the city and a smart new market area generating its own ambiance than the Castle Market any day.