In the concourses of Bramall Lane at half-time on Monday night, murmurs of dark humour. It’s a distinctly Yorkshire breed of conversation that can make the joyous sound gruff and the despondent appear remarkably upbeat, catching you off guard in tone and delivery.
Some joked about having a shot and others chuckled about winning 6-5. Some discussed forcing their season tickets between now and May on their worst enemies – “give another bugger the punishment”.
Some laughed about the lack of queues at the bars because everyone else had gone home. All of them shared the principle that if you don’t laugh you’ll cry, I suppose. Except that they aren’t mutual exclusives.
Ten months ago, Sheffield United celebrated promotion with three Championship games still to play and eventually finished on 91 points, their highest ever total in the top two tiers.
Pretty much ever since, everything has gone to ruin and regret. Amazon might be interested in doing one of their documentary series on half the budget – Nothing: Sheffield United. Let the cameras roll and then cover your eyes from the horror.
Even back then, heady in May, a sense of pervading doom was being switched only for the impending kind. Paul Heckingbottom had overachieved ludicrously, taking over in 16th and taking them here in the space of 18 months – every Blade knew that.
There had been rumours of administration as late as March 2023 and an ongoing transfer embargo. The next month brought talk of the club not being able to afford bonus payments or transfer instalments.
“Now we know where we’re going to be, the money people can get on with doing whatever,” Heckingbottom said immediately after confirmation of promotion – that “whatever” deliberately laid heavy with meaning.
Heckingbottom knew that budgets were not going to become wildly inflated. Prince Abdullah Bin Mosaad Al Saud had come close to selling before, not least to a Nigerian businessman who was later sued by the US Securities and Exchange Commission for allegedly faking documents and making up companies to defraud investors.
What those money men did to Heckingbottom and his team was to sell two of their best players, Iliman Ndiaye and Sander Berge. Neither have exactly pulled up trees after moves to Marseille and Burnley respectively, but that’s not the point. It presented the impression that Sheffield United were taking the money and running, barely even trying to stay up.
In fact, that’s a little inaccurate. Sheffield United have signed 13 players over the course of this season. Cameron Archer was the Ndiaye replacement (and more expensive). Vinicius Souza was the Berge replacement (and about the same price).
Gustavo Hamer was one of the best creators in the Championship. They signed five players on loan (including Ben Brereton Diaz and James McAtee) and Tom Davies on a free transfer from Everton. Much of this seemed to make sense then, even if hindsight has painted everything black.
Nor did the season start dismally, despite the predictions of gloom. Heckingbottom’s team didn’t lose by more than a single goal until their sixth league game. During that period, Nottingham Forest scored a winner in the 89th minute, Manchester City in the 88th and Tottenham scored twice in stoppage time to warp three away points into none.
The heavy defeats began and the rot then set in, but embarrassment wasn’t quite set in stone as some would have you believe. Perhaps it all really might have been different, light grey rather than dark night.
Still, we are basically upselling failure here. Sheffield United have scored the fewest goals and conceded the most. They have had the fewest shots and shots on target and allowed the most of both. They make clanging individual errors but then the system forever seems designed to expose those weaknesses.
They have appointed a new-old manager who had failed twice since he was sacked here and people thought that might be a good idea.
Of late, Chris Wilder has appeared cheerful in pre-match interviews, as if making the most of what he knows will soon follow.
But how many times can you say “we need to give it our all and cut out the mistakes” and then watching those mistakes on repeat before you wonder why you’re here at all. That isn’t intended as a defence: Wilder has offered nothing new since his return.
You might reasonably argue that this Premier League season has been more damaging for Burnley than Sheffield United. After all, they spent £100m, barely sold anyone and have the same number of points.
Burnley had a way of playing and a highly rated manager that were instantly exposed. They had hopes and dreams that were trodden into the dirt by the bigger boys with their attacking efficiency and defensive resolve.
Really, we are just choosing between two different types of despair. Love a little and lose a lot or lose all the way – take your pick. This is a two-club competition in which there are only losers. It is proof that there is no natural floor for promoted clubs who make transfer market mistakes or hope too much or don’t hope enough. Insurance policies don’t exist when you aren’t part of the financial or established elite. This can happen. This will happen again.
The salient question now is not whether Sheffield United will go down, but how seasons like these can leave water damage on a football club.
Winning is infectious, we’re always told. But it’s never as infectious as losing is. The escape out of the misery cycle is always a hundred times harder. The great irony of the Blades being killed by a thousand cuts.
“There are a lot of broken and damaged players out there, this is what the league can do to you,” said Wilder on Monday night, and he’s right.
Careers can change in these results. Belief is lost and never returns in quite the same way, like a healed burn that forever shows a little discoloured whenever the skin gets cold. There is a creep of uncertainty in every individual: first you aren’t a problem, then you aren’t the problem, then you aren’t the only problem, then you aren’t the biggest problem. Before you know it, you only know what being a problem feels like.
If players and managers can be changed without too much fuss, the same is not true of supporters and their psyches are shifting too. It is no fun following your team every week as they are beaten in variously humiliating ways.
Self-preservation kicks in, represented either in gallows humour or, worse, growing apathy. They will remember this season, next season. How does the next promotion push feel when you’ve already seen the void it can lead towards?
And so this has been an appalling waste of time and space and effort, everything that went into creating something that ended up being nothing at all. Sheffield United needed the money and so they needed to come up, but that was the only thing worth coming up for. And when money is the only driver, above competition, hope and romance, meaning evaporates as quickly as their chances of staying up.
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