Tag: premier league

All for nothing?

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No matter who wins this afternoon’s little matchup in North London, it’s going to be a massive struggle for them to stay in the Premier League next season. The last six clubs promoted to the top flight have come straight back down, and between them, scored a record number of points. And not a record number in a good way.

Why is this? Well, the gulf between the two leagues has always been opening up, but it seems that soon after Covid, it widened into a chasm of epic proportions. And if you were in there when this happened, you now seem to have some sort of protection against relegation.

So suddenly, you have the likes of Bournemouth, Fulham, Brentford and Brighton battling it out for European places. And no offence to those clubs, but they’re not exactly historically the biggest teams. But they were in the mix when it counted and now they are the new biggest teams.

Of course, 95% of it comes down to money. Plucky performances and passionate support can only do so much. And how on earth are Championship cubs meant to compete when there’s this level of financial disparity?

When you don’t have European football, and when you don’t have an assured place in the Premier League, you simply can’t attract big players. And the double whammy is that the opposition can.
And thanks to English teams performing way above the average in the European competitions this year, there could be as many as 10 of the 17 existing teams in the Premier League playing in Europe next year. Six of them will be in the top tier on the chart below, another four in that second tier.

There’s a lot of money splashing around for the other clubs when you aren’t in those top two bands.

Spurs and ManU might have had absolutely awful seasons this time around, but they were still miles clear of the relegation places. There’s just no competition anymore when it comes to going down. And while that might be a very comfortable position for the established clubs, it will slowly(?) kill the league.

Of course, I hope we go up this afternoon. We have played brilliantly all season and we deserve to celebrate with something to show for it. But at the back of my mind (and those of dirty l**ds and Burnley fans, if they’re being honest), is the tinge of realism that next season will be a hard watch.

Still… let’s deal with that if and when we have to.
COME ON YOU RED AND WHITE WIZZZZZAAAAARDS!

EDIT: OK, a few days later now and that didn’t go well.
But I have just spotted this:

Which does kind of prove the point.

Last day

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The last day of an absolutely terrible football season (for Sheffield United, at least). We’ve broken all the wrong records, and it’s been pretty depressing to watch since before day one.

Mismanagement from the board, tactical naivety, a plethora of individual errors, a fragile mentality, a million injuries, a decent slice of bad luck, disappointing loanees, NOT ENOUGH MONEY, and some iffy refereeing decisions… it’s just all added up.

But we are in the Premier League. The best league in the world. And that’s worth remembering.

Because at the end of it all, I have to remind myself that we’re playing teams who can spend a billion pounds or more on the best players in the world. And while that certainly isn’t an excuse for a lot of what we’ve been put through this season, it certainly is a reason for some of it.

A lot of fans are saying that they’re looking forward to being in the Championship again, without the prima donnas and the piles of cash that rules the roost. Bigger fish in smaller pond and all that.
Without VAR too, but I’m always interested to understand how people have forgotten about the pre-VAR days when we complained about the referees and not the technology. Just watching the League Two play off final right now, and the ref made a howler with a penalty decision which would have changed the direction of the match (and likely the winner), and VAR saved the day. We’ll have to accept that sort of thing again, and we’ll be happy about it, right? Right.

More personally, the return to the Championship is also going to mean that I have to spend shedloads of GBPs on a streaming package so I can watch the games. And that’s not going to be pretty in ZARs, especially after the 29th.

Anyway. Last day. Last game. Last chance for a bit of pride. Not much else to play for, nothing matters, so the pressure is off, right?

My stress levels with still be in the high nineties at 5pm. It always matters…

It’s back…

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Indeed. The Premier League starts tonight. Manchester City at Burnley, no less. Eww.

And so the rules (which, I will remind you, I didn’t write) say that I must put this on the blog.

I even brought this out earlier.

Further to that, the rule which I did write, says that I must remind everyone that this video was shot in Piketberg. Piketberg is also known for… er… being on the N7 between Malmesbury and Citrusdal.

That’s about it.

But onto more important matters:
Of course, this season, the Mighty Red And White Wizards from Beautiful Downtown Bramall Lane are also in the Premier League.

So, some sort of prediction seems appropriate.

Well, given that we’ve known for almost 4 months that we were going to be starting in the Premier League this weekend, it’s been a pretty disastrous pre-season, and an especially chaotic last fortnight. We’ve sold several of our best players (yes, including Sander, who I foolishly referenced in that last post):

We don’t have many players, we do have a lot of injuries, and we also have at least one visa issue, thus it looks like some of our team, and even more of our much-depleted bench will be made up of academy players. Compare and contrast with the big boys spending literally hundreds of millions of pounds throughout the summer, and it feels like we’re scratching around in the dirt for whatever we can find.

It’s going to be a very long, very hard season. So I’ll absolutely bite your hand off for 17th position or above – and therefore survival – and the chance to go again next season.

On our side, we have the best fans in the country, we have a formidable stadium to visit, we have some incredible team spirit, and we have a local, down-to-earth manager who understands the club, the limitations facing him, and the importance of the team’s success to the fanbase. I can’t wait for our first win (it took a horribly long while last time), but I’ll fully understand when we struggle, and I’ll continue to support wholeheartedly as long as there is 100% effort from the players.

You can’t ask for more.

We’re a very small fish in a very big pond, but it’s quite literally the best pond in the world to be in.
We worked damn hard to get promotion last season and we had some great times getting it.
This is what we wanted*. We shouldn’t forget that at any point this time around.

Never stop supporting. Never stop believing.


* although perhaps not quite as we wanted it.

Up!

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What a night under the lights at Bramall Lane! An expectant sell-out crowd. An opposition set up to defend and frustrate. A tense first half. And then, through patience and persistence, with a touch of Premier League quality, the breakthrough. And from that moment on, nothing ever looked to be in doubt.

The party atmosphere was augmented by a second goal 15 minutes from the end, and after that, it was just dotting the i’s and crossing the t’s as we cruised to a victory and promotion back to the Premier League.

And then one big party for the 30,000 fans in the ground. I would have loved to have been there. There were a few tears last night and actually some mixed emotions. Sure: joy, relief, pride, but also a tinge of sadness, as well. It doesn’t happen often, but it’s missing out on these sort of shared moments that make me most homesick, even though I’ve been here for almost 20 years now.

But, what a night. What a team. What a club.

The Premier League is going to be a massive challenge – more so than maybe ever before – but with that combination of youth, experience, team spirit and those fans, I know we’ll give it our best shot.

Day 505 – 505

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Day 505 of lockdown. I’ve been doing just about as much as I can around the house, and now I’m feeling it.

Time then, if I’m going to have anything at all left for watching the first Premier League match of the new season this evening, for a really lazy blog post.

I’ve always loved the way this track warms up as it progresses.

But the truth is, even having dropped this from the Sheffield legends in here, I’m going to be asleep before kick off tonight.

More tomorrow.