Alex Miller’s Sheffield Wednesday column: What's with all the Twitter hate for Lee Bullen?

By promoting posts that attract the most impressions, engagements, likes, shares and retweets, it is often the calmer, more nuanced, reasoned opinions that are left to the wayside.

It’s a big part of the reason that social media has been so heavily documented in studies around the rise of far-right and far-left politics in recent years; why shock-hack performers on both sides of the political divide have been able to forge lucrative careers.

In the sports media, particularly on a national scale, it’s why certain media outlets and pundits so often get more airtime than others; a simply-worded and provocative 40-second soundbite on why Bournemouth may or may not be a bigger club than Rangers travels faster than a 2,000-word study into, say, corruption in football.

The shades of grey in a more nuanced argument pushed to the wayside; brevity, shock and drama is king.

These algorithms mean searching Twitter or Facebook for the feelings and thoughts of a football fanbase is something of a doomed venture. And it’s why the noise surrounding Sheffield Wednesday icon Lee Bullen should be taken with a pinch of salt.

Far be it beyond me to tell any Owls supporter how or what to think, but the resistance from a section of Wednesdayite support towards Bullen has been something I personally am yet to get used to or understand in my time covering the club.

It reared its head again this week after Garry Monk was finally able to add to his backroom staff, with Andrew Hughes named as a new first-team coach. Some – and bearing in mind those algorithms – made clear the possible departure of Bullen was in their minds cause for celebration.

It’s important to make absolutely clear that the club are yet to indicate where this leaves Bullen or indeed Nicky Weaver after the signing of Hughes and goalkeeping coach Darryl Flahavan.

But whether the pair are kept in situ – Wednesday still wouldn’t have one of the bigger backroom teams in the Championship – whether they’re moved to work with the club’s younger players or whether they move on, it should be said that Bullen in particular deserves a mountain range of respect for what he’s brought to Sheffield Wednesday FC.

As a player, the Scot’s short but shortbread-sweet Owls career sees him talked of in the pantheon of great Wednesday captains, the image of him slumped exhausted in the Millennium Stadium dressing room beside beer cans and the League One playoff trophy hanging large in the executive reception at Hillsborough.

From a small town in Scotland he may be, but in those four years he epitomised the city of Sheffield he now calls home; determined, gritty, working class. And above all, honest.

Agreeing to a half-hour telephone call during lockdown, Bullen spoke to this Star writer for nearly two hours, pushing plans aside to continue talking about everything from his experiences playing in Australia and Greece to how he felt about not getting the Wednesday manager’s job last year.

What shone through above tales of being present as Gazza took to the dentist’s chair and the party after Cardiff was one simple thing; his love for Sheffield Wednesday Football Club. In over a year of interviews with ex-players, current players, managers and even supporters, I’m not sure anybody’s passion for Sheffield Wednesday has topped Bullen’s.

Far too easy a line has been drawn between his ascension to first-team involvement and the downturn in Wednesday fortunes. It’s scapegoatery at its finest.

There are 100,000 things that have contributed to that fall from grace – not least the short-termism shown in putting together the squad by management staff before him – and the basis of his three caretaker spells suggest that Lee Bullen is a fine coach.

In an admittedly small sample size of 15 competitive games, Bullen has a win percentage of 46.7 per cent, a stat that places him behind only 50s and 60s pair Harry Catterick and Vic Buckingham in the Wednesday managerial roll call.

Should Should Wednesday have sneaked a win over QPR heading into the September 2019 international break Lee Bullen may well have been named permanent manager having won five of his seven matches. And from there who knows what could have happened?

“I’m at a club that I love,” he said in that epic lockdown conversation. “I’m working with players that I love and I’ve loved working with the managers that I’ve worked with and the manager I’m working with now.

“Sheffield being a very working class city is similar to the way I was brought up as a kid, the area I was brought up in was very much a mining area. I’ve done the nine-to-five, I’ve had those jobs and so I know how lucky I am to be in football.

“It’s the down-to-earth mentality of earning your crust, that work-hard, play-hard way and the fact that the people here hold their clubs in their heart – both sides of the city. And that’s me too, I’m blue and white 100 per cent.

“I’m in a city that I love and I love the people of Sheffield and the way people from Sheffield are. And I do I hope they feel similar about me.”

We’re yet to see what will come next for the Scot and this column should not be read as an obituary on Lee Bullen’s career at Hillsborough.

But in the mind of its writer, he deserves far more respect than he’s shown – on the evidence thrown up by those social media algorithms at least.

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