Sheffield Wednesday can embrace an underdog mentality after mice bit back at Leeds United

Watching the two teams stride out at Elland Road on Saturday afternoon, a cursory glance over the line-ups delivered a stark realisation; that right here, right now, the Owls are underdogs in this division. And it’s a status the whole club can embrace.

The nature of undisclosed fees these days means there’s no firm grip on what either squad cost to put together, but some mental gymnastics would surmise that in terms of transfer fees, Wednesday’s entire starting line-up cost some way south of £2m.

Georginio Rutter cost Leeds United £35.5m.

The financial disparaties won’t always be that clear of course. But for Wednesday, the shoe is has been thrown onto the other foot. In League One, opposition managers used thin veils to bemoan budgetary differences time and again.

We’re not precisely sure where, but it’s now Wednesday that, talented squad though they are, are sat somewhere towards the other end of the scale.

This week the club almost missed out on a transfer target when Swansea City - not generally considered to be one of the division’s biggest hitters - lodged a bid in the region of £3m. It’s a sum Wednesday don’t appear to be able to consider as things stand.

Questions over why this can be the case given the cost it is to be a Wednesdayite these days are very fair ones of course. That Swansea’s bid was in part funded by a major player sale raises familiar themes of fundraising failure on the part of the Owls. These are topics for another column.

For now, underdogism is a sense of spirit the Owls can draw upon and harness. Little Wednesday against the world. Excuse our Spanish, but perhaps a little sense of ‘F*** you, this is us’.

It’s a theme Xisco has spoken about to no little eye-rolling, his ‘lions to mice’ comments rolled out after a chastening evening with Mansfield Town. It flew in the face of play-off chatter some months back, but when clarified this week it made sense.

It wasn’t a dig at the attitude of his players, more a reflection of where Wednesday have travelled in their jump up the ladder; from a roaring beast of a club to one having to be quick, savvy and cunning in its quest for cheese - or survival.

Their 90 minutes against Leeds threw up lots of other animal metaphors we’ll not swoop for or claw at - most of them positive. On a purely footballing level, it was robust and stoic, keeping Daniel Farke’s post-Premier League millions at bay for much of the piece and throwing back their fair share in return.

In the end, despite the opposition presence £35m strikers, they were probably the better team in the second half and could have won it. Wednesday have got better week-on-week since Hull and though concerns remain over their potency up top, Elland Road showed the return of that ability to roll sleeves up and have at it.

This is not to say that is how Wednesday should go about the entirety their survival mission - if that is even what it will turn out to be - far from it.

It’s more the garnering of a spirit of scrapping against the odds, of taking pride in digging in and handing out bloody noses to the big dogs.

Expectation will always be there at Sheffield Wednesday and it always should be.

But the tongue-in-cheek ‘Massive’ stuff doesn’t really work this season, in terms of budgets at least.

A ‘lion-hearted mice’ thing just might.