This young Sheffield Wednesday team 'will give more' than last derby no contest
Alan Biggs on this weekend’s derby from a Sheffield Wednesday perspective
Is there - can there ever have been - such a thing as a free hit in a Steel City Derby?
If so, that’s Sheffield Wednesday at Bramall Lane on Sunday. No-one but no-one gives them a prayer.
Which surely makes it just about the strangest, weirdest meeting of these fierce rivals ever staged.
Step forward now, please, any Owls supporter tipping a win, or even a draw, in the latest joust with Sheffield United.
Frankly, this page also runs a mile from any such prediction. It would defy all logic. Even the football gods, with their capacity for making mugs of all of us, seem to be facing the other way.
Not that Wednesday have nothing to lose. Not with the dread of relegation possibly being confirmed at the hands of their deadliest rivals.
But one thing ought to be a safe bet - that this Owls young team will give it more of a shot than appeared to be the case at Hillsborough in November.
I say “appeared” because United’s stroll to a 3-0 win left both a damning impression, and with hindsight, possibly the wrong one. It was the one time long-suffering Owls fans have really rounded on their team during this horrendous campaign.
Sure, it looked like a lack of fight from them because it proved to be no-contest in what should be the most competitive of fixtures.
But I can’t believe there was a lack of effort, not in that of all games. Instead, the effort was misguided, there was a shortage of conviction and belief. And maybe they just froze.
It’s not before time that Henrik Pedersen is taking a more direct approach
Sunday is for braver hearts, even if the team looks even weaker following multiple exits hardly balanced by young loanees, however talented.
It’s also not before time that Henrik Pedersen is taking a more direct approach, pragmatism over pretensions of playing through the thirds.
Having nothing to lose in a derby is an alien concept. But can Pedersen encourage exactly that mindset?
It’s the only possible way I can see Wednesday contriving any sort of surprise result.