Oh there'll be some hum-drum - Alex Miller's Sheffield Wednesday column
Sheffield Wednesday took on Wolves on Tuesday evening and came up short. Alex Miller was there.
In the end, the crowd begged Jarvis Thornton to stroke it from beneath his feet and shoot from distance.
They asked of that not because they thought Jarvis Thornton should shoot from distance or even that he was especially capable of doing so. You rather suspect that they did so because they wanted to feel something. Anything.
Because Tuesday evening’s Carabao Cup defeat to Wolves was the sort that didn’t come with pre-match pyro or big-screen drama or last minute excitement or even excitement at all. It was a hum-drum, so-so, routine and reality cup match in which a much-changed League One team lost to a much-changed Championship team in a half-empty stadium. And from one seat in the press box at least, that’s OK.
It’s OK because that is what the majority of a football season consists of. Not the half-emptiness; Sheffield Wednesday’s incredible season ticket reception has seen to that. But by the time August has turned to May and you take out the screamers and the wins and the vignettes that make up a season’s highlights package, you’re left with many, many, many hours of hum-drum. In fact, a football season is more often than not nine parts hum-drum, though a club as trademark barmy as Wednesday may not always allow it to feel that way.
Perhaps that expectation of barminess influences part of the social media conversation that from one corner is pleading for patience while the other demands the sacking of a manager two league matches on from a firm and public backing by the club’s popular new sporting director. And it’s not just on the extremities of social media either; it’s the topic that dominates phone-ins and podcasts and in cursory chats with supporters on the two occasions Wednesday have failed to win a football match this season. Perhaps it’s nobody’s fault, it’s just the way it is.
Some of the concerns certainly seem fair and opinions are what shape this game. But with some of the debate so virile at this early stage you can’t help ask yourself the question of whether perhaps once a fanbase has breathed-in drama as oxygen for so long, the modality of a slow and steady rebuild process might leave the lungs gasping for air. Just a few months ago, so-so steadiness was a faraway utopia. Though senior figures spoke of the need for patience, this club in this division always delivers high expectation - everybody knew that going in and many saw this discourse coming.
Anyway, back to the evening itself. After the sing-off of a shared pre-match anthem that was a little more Geoffrey Hayes than Jeff Beck in feeling, Wednesday’s tally of 11 shots against their registered xG of 0.37 was reflective of an attacking performance that lacked the creation of clear chances; Wolves’ 13 shots and an xG of 1.04 a fair reflection of the gap between the sides on the night. Ugly defensive lapses at god-awful times kicked the guts out of the Owls’ chances of what would have been a headline-grabbing upset against a squad aiming at promotion to the Premier League with 264 full international caps in their named matchday cohort.
Tuesday evening provided yet another reminder to some at least that in the here and now, Wednesday are not yet one transfer window into what could be a six-or-weight window project to return the squad to anything like the one that had its own dreamy glances towards the Championship play-off places two years back. Four of those windows are subject to recruitment restrictions. With or without changes to the dugout in the medium or longer-term, there’ll be some hum-drum.
The concessions were galling. Wednesday’s defence collectively made a reyt old Richard of defending balls into the box. Two minutes in, Liam Palmer failed to clear and Joe Lumley parried awkwardly into the feet of Sil Swinkels for an own goal. Ricardo Santos is a man with a frame so lofty he could paint his living room ceiling while sat on the sofa and so it was all the more galling he failed to clear that bouncing cross late in the first half. Others had stopped instead of tracking their runners into the box.
Liverpool loanee Kieran Morrison continued his bright foray into Wednesday life with moments of glitter on the right and Billy Mitchell’s return to fitness undertook an important step forward. He looks a player. Will Grainger had a couple of attractive moments early doors and Reece James dived about getting stuck in.
A glance along the press bench with a few minutes to go told a story of the evening; chins balanced on hands and yawns aplenty. Of those remaining in the crowd there seemed a similar sense. It wasn’t exciting and it wasn’t horrific.
What happens in the next few weeks and months will be the more telling journey and maybe that change does come. But as an early-season, heavily-rotated Carabao Cup defeat against higher opposition it was fine and inoffensive and hum-drum and an example of what makes up most of a football season. As exciting as the last few months have been, it won’t be all pyro parties and glory.