Entitlement undercurrent punctuating unlikely Sheffield United promotion bid after Premier League pain
A look at the uncharacteristic undercurrent of entitlement punctuating Sheffield United’s unlikely promotion bid after last season’s Premier League pain
This morning, in preparation for this piece which I have been tempted to write for some time now, I posed a simple question to Sheffield United supporters via the ever-balanced medium of Twitter. “Would you rather the Blades... play beautifully and lose 1-0, or play terribly and win 1-0?”
It was a binary choice with only one real answer, right? Surely every single football fan would always choose the three points. Not so, it turns out; or according to the imperfections of an online poll, anyway. Almost six per cent of more than 1,500 respondents chose that they’d rather their side played beautifully and lost.
Of course that still leaves 94 per cent who’d take a scrappy win all day long, which is just as well considering their side have done just that on a few occasions of late. United were all over the shop defensively against Portsmouth and somehow won 2-1. They were dragged down to Derby’s level at Pride Park and triumphed 1-0. They did what they had to do to beat Luton at the weekend.
United go into Monday’s seismic clash with Leeds United with the chance to overtake them and go top of the division with three points. They are, by many metrics, the best team in the EFL this season. No other have won more games, or reached the 70-point barrier before Chris Wilder’s men. And they have done so often without being at full tilt from the first minute until the last.
Some of the reaction, at the end of a three-game week that yielded nine points and only strengthened United’s grip on second spot, was astounding. One of the most eye-catching was a thread on the popular fan forum S24SU, titled: “Wilder needs to leave this club now,” although the poster potentially exposed himself as someone on the wind-up when he suggested “tactical genius” Erik ten Hag as his preferred replacement.
I ummed and aahed about writing this column. I could already imagine the replies on the cesspit of Twitter telling me I had no right to an opinion - hell, there was even one this morning having a pop over what I’d not yet written before I’d even settled down at my desk - or that I was somehow telling people how to support their club. To be clear, that is not the aim here. Folks pay good money to watch football these days and are perfectly entitled to their views.
And this isn’t to say there aren’t some reasonable and understandable concerns and question marks. On other days United could have easily been turned over by Portsmouth and Luton, had both been more clinical with their chances at crucial times. But the history books show that they weren’t. This United side is made of stern stuff and when they put everything on the line and grind out another gritty victory, when many others would have crumbled, that, for my money, deserves praise rather than pillory.
Beauty, after all, is in the eye of the beholder. What constitutes a “good performance?” anyway? Sure, having 75 per cent of the ball, 30 shots and winning 4-0, but how about grinding out a huge three points after standing up to the physical test of a side who raise their game because you’re in town? Some such performances certainly stand out more in my mind than free-flowing batterings and as the league table shows, there are different ways to go about a promotion race. United may lack the attacking potency of Leeds but they are at least more exciting to watch than Burnley, which is an admittedly low bar.
The exciting thing for me is that they can get better. Signing five new players in January solved one issue of squad depth but arguably formed another, of integrating half a starting XI into United’s way of playing. That will come, and United will be better for it. In the meantime, how about enjoying another unlikely tilt at promotion? It admittedly does not have the same feel of 2018/19, when United attacked the Championship with a freshness on the pitch and in the stands.
But this, in different ways, is arguably as against-the-odds after the horror show that was last season. They may deny it now but I’d wager that many Blades felt United were more likely to get out of the Championship this term through the relegation trapdoor than promotion. I know personally of one fan who couldn’t wait for the relegation market so he could lump on United going down, such was his belief. As the prospect of a Premier League hangover loomed large, It didn’t seem such an outlandish prospect.
Instead Wilder’s men are way ahead of schedule in what many thought would be a consolidation season, but the same excitement doesn’t seem to be there. It is a sense of entitlement from a club built on very different principles, after three seasons out of six in the Premier League, and the feeling that competing for promotion should be inevitable?
Is it Premier League scarring of a different kind, with supporters wary of going back up to the best league in world football and being battered, beaten and bruised once again? Or is it just life watching football in a social media age, when faceless accounts talk about ‘cooking’ and ‘cold’ and seem more obsessed with taunting their rivals than any reasonable debate over the fortunes of their club?
The best type of football, for me and 94 per cent of votors in that poll, is winning football. And after the horror show of last season, and what could potentially lie ahead if United get to where they want to be this time around, maybe that’s something we should all just savour while we can.