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Clough left to clean up a decade of poor decisions - opposition focus
Saturday, 3rd Jan 2015 16:22 by Clive Whittingham

Sheff Utd boss Nigel Clough, just as he did at Derby, is midway through a substantial clean-up operation at an accident-prone club stuck below its true level.

In 2007, Sheffield United were beaten 3-0 at home by Swansea City in the FA Cup Third Round - an upset at the time, with the Swans plying their trade two divisions below.

The Blades weren’t that fussed about it though. They’d had an excellent Christmas in their first season back in the Premier League - beating Arsenal 1-0 at Bramall Lane in the final fixture of 2006 immediately after victories against Watford, Charlton and Wigan. Throw a draw with Aston Villa into the mix and Neil Warnock’s side had plundered 13 points from 21 available to them over the festive period. They were comfortably outside the bottom three.

Eight years later, Sheffield United are sixth in League One. They’ve been in the third tier for the last three seasons and don’t look an overly good bet to escape at the fourth attempt either. It wouldn’t be much of a Poirot Christmas special to conclude that decision making has not been a strong suit of the a club that is surely, by any measurement other than on field performance, at least one weight division too low.

Despite that fine Christmas, Sheffield United were relegated at the end of that 2006/07 campaign. Bring it up in any pub in the red and white half of the steel city and it won’t be long before “chuffin Carlos Tevez” is mentioned. The Argentinean, signed illegally, was an inspirational figure as West Ham staged a remarkable run of seven wins from the final nine fixtures, including all of the last four, including a 1-0 win at Manchester United on the final day, to survive at the Blades’ expense. Although found to have broken every rule in the book, West Ham were only fined rather than docked points or dropped a division. Controversially, one of the conclusions the panel reached was that it would be unfair to the West Ham supporters to demote their club. Quite what they thought it was for the Bramall Lane faithful, their players and manager Neil Warnock, God only knows. The Hammers shovelled compensation up the M1 which should, along with the Premier League parachute payments, have aided a swift return, but eight years on they’re still waiting for another season of top flight football in these parts and have, in fact, regressed further still.

Sheffield United, and Neil Warnock in particular, weren’t entirely blameless in their own demise that season. Declaring his team safe and the relegation battle over following a 3-0 win against West Ham at the Lane in April that season probably wasn’t the shrewdest move of Warnock’s long career. Nor, when his team needed one more win to survive, was playing an ultra-defensive formation in what turned out to be a 3-0 defeat against an Aston Villa side with nothing to play for in the penultimate match. And you could also say that not even being able to get a draw at home to Wigan Athletic in your final do-or-die home game of the season leaves you little room for complaint.

The years that followed were littered with lousy managerial appointments and missed opportunities. Replacing Warnock with Bryan Robson is a footballing version of hiring Harold Shipman to turn around your local GP practice. With relegations at Middlesbrough, Bradford and West Brom already on his train wreck of a managerial CV, he looked a good bet to add a fourth demotion at Sheffield United before he was relieved of his duties on Valentine’s Day. Once again a chairman who liked the idea of bringing his rich friends into the boardroom after matches to have a pint with “Captain Marvel” had seen his money frittered away, his team made considerably worse and his club set back years by somebody who was a fabulous player in a different era for the sport, but couldn’t manage his way out of a wet paper bag in the modern day.

Robson left the team nursing a run of one league win (guess who that was against) in ten matches and throttling towards the relegation zone at a rate of knots. They’d just drawn 0-0 at home to Scunthorpe United. The scale of the underachievement under Robson was best highlighted by the results after he’d been packed off to the pub. Kevin Blackwell - not a manager noted for his finesse, forward thinking, style of football or anything positive at all really - took over and led them on a run of eight wins in the final 13 games of the season. They ended up missing the play-offs by four points. If only they’d made that change a fortnight sooner.

They did reach the play-off final under Blackwell a year later, but Sheffield United have lost in the end-of season knockout more than any other club - seven occasions, including four finals - and they were beaten at Wembley by Burnley. The parachute payments and West Ham money had been spent for no great return. James Beattie, a particularly big money gamble - talk of £40,000 a week wages in the Championship - could be found in Champs on Ecclesall Road more than he could the penalty box at Bramall Lane. Blackwell’s team didn’t make the play-offs in 2009/10, winning only six of their final 20 matches. Rather than sack him then, the board kept faith through the summer, allowed him to spend the budget for 2010/11, and then fired him a week into the campaign - after Neil Warnock had won 3-0 at Bramall Lane with his new QPR side. There was a suggestion that the identity of the victorious opposition manager, who’d resigned in acrimonious circumstances following the Premier League exit, had a lot to do with the timing of that.

United appointed Gary Speed as manager but results didn’t improve a great deal and he was quickly poached by Wales anyway. The Blades would finish that campaign relegated under Micky Adams - a boyhood Sheffield United fan but, again, a manager out of his depth north of League Two or this side of 1996. They were beaten 3-0 by QPR again at Loftus Road as the R’s soared to promotion under Warnock’s guidance. United went to League One and haven’t been back since.

The pace of managerial change in S2 has been maintained since then. Danny Wilson got them to the play-off final in 2012 where they lost to Huddersfield, and was then fired in April the season after leaving everybody’s favourite skull cracker Chris Morgan in caretaker charge for a play-off semi-final with Yeovil. An attendance of just 15,262, leaving the best part of 17,000 seats empty, for the home leg said a lot about the city’s optimism of success in the dreaded format, and sure enough they were beaten 2-1 on aggregate having won the first leg 1-0. Former Everton defender and Scotland international David Weir, promising some sort of deep-fried brand of total football, looked like he might relegate them to the unthinkable depths of League Two at one point - they lost ten and drew three of their first 14 games last season - before he was replaced by Nigel Clough.

Defence tightened, results improved, United have once again become known as a cup team, just as they were under Warnock in the 1990s when they reached the semi-final of both domestic trophies in the same season. They were at Wembley in the FA Cup semi-final last season and have beaten Southampton on the way to a semi-final in the League Cup against Spurs this term.

But it’s a promotion this club craves/needs. Beaten, and outplayed, at home by Bristol City on day one, they’ve since slipped 15 points behind Steve Cotterill’s side in League One. Sixth place offers hope of promotion through the play-offs, but you’d not find many willing to put much money on them succeeding at the eighth attempt at that if it comes down to it. There has been criticism of Clough’s cautious, defensive style which will ring bells at his previous clubs Derby and Burton. Clough in danger of being known as a ship steadier rather than a promotion achiever - see the acceleration in Derby’s progress since he was replaced by Steve McClaren at Pride Park.

You’ll also not find many neutrals expressing much support or sympathy for the Blades’ cause. Ordinarily a club that has fallen on such hard times would be celebrated and backed on long cup runs, and few outside Hillsborough would begrudge them a promotion back to the second tier, but Sheffield United’s appalling decision making hasn’t been limited to managerial appointments and cash outlay.

Wilson’s bid to promote them back to the Championship was undermined at the very death of the season by 30-goal striker Ched Evans being sent to prison for raping a teenager in a hotel room. Evans claims the sex was consensual and has found plenty of support for that claim among Sheffield United supporters. Not, though, from the jury at his trial, or the legal professionals who deemed he had few grounds for an appeal - the people who heard the full case, in detail, from start to finish, from all the people involved, who were in court throughout, and who are charged with making the decision.

What has followed since Evans’ release from prison earlier this season has been a sad indictment of Evans, of Sheffield United, of a section of their support, and of football.

On Evans’ part, he maintains his innocence, and is progressing through a new legal case to try and clear his name, fast-tracked by the CPS in a way other every-day plebs would not be afforded, funded by the father of his girlfriend who - despite being very publicly cheated on by a boyfriend who went round to knob the drunken sloppy seconds of his friend while his brother and a friend filmed the episode through a hotel window - is standing by her man. But Evans also claims he can return to football as some sort of role model and example of a person who rebuilt their life after a prison sentence. He said: "I have learned a valuable lesson and know that over time I can prove myself to be a positive influence, not just on the pitch but also in the community.” You’re either an innocent man or a reformed role-model - you cannot be both.

Rather than let that judicial review process play out, Evans and United tried to return him to football immediately after his release. If he’s innocent, let him prove it, then bring him back. If he’s not innocent, let him apologise, and then pursue the “everybody deserves a second chance” route. The refusal to do either while insisting he has the right to walk straight back into the privileged, well-paid position he held when he committed the act, led to the standard media outcry and hyperbole.

Jessica Ennis, a hero of the city who had a stand named after her at Bramall Lane following her Olympic success, said she’d want her name removed from the ground if Evans was brought back in the manner Sheff Utd were proposing. Her Twitter account was subsequently besieged with vile abuse from some United supporters. An Olympic champion from Sheffield abused by people of the city because she disapproved of a League One football team signing a convicted rapist. Television cameras queued up outside Valley Parade to film a group of predominantly young, male Sheffield United supporters arrive for an away game singing songs of varying taste in support of said convicted rapist.

When it finally became clear that Evans would not be able to return to United without either clearing his name or apologising for his crime - who would have thought it? - United, who’ve handled their PR about as well as the Islamic State throughout the whole thing, put out a begrudging statement saying they’d been deprived of the chance to give a young man a second chance in life by the incessant overreaction of the media.

All very worthy and noble of them, until you remember that Evans is a fully-fit, 26-year-old, full international striker capable of scoring 30 goals in the division they’re currently playing in and available for free. One wonders, but certainly not for very long, whether United would be quite so caring and intent on doing the right thing and giving a boy a second chance if the boy in question was, say, a 33-year-old right full back with a dodgy knee? How desperate to hand out a second chance would they be if it was Matt Hill, who also played for United in Evans’ last match as a professional against Leyton Orient, who had been sent down immediately afterwards? Hill, 33 years old now and not much good when he was 23, I suspect wouldn’t have even been on their radar, nor would United fans be singing his name desperate for his return.

All this “everybody deserves a second chance,” “he’s done his time”, and “it was a miscarriage of justice anyway” gnashing and wailing is merely fluffy, worthy, liberal window dressing to mask the real reason Sheffield United want Evans back. Never mind some deeply held belief in second chances and rehabilitating offenders, the simple fact is that in football if you are valuable to your team and can improve their league performance and/or become a sellable asset, you can pretty much do, say and behave however you like. Unspeakable crimes are belittled, or overlooked altogether, if they’re committed by a player who is doing well for your team. Marlon King, another who spent time at Bramall Lane recently, was sent to prison on three separate occasions, showing no contrition, nor any hint that he planned to moderate or change his behaviour - but he scored a few goals, so football clubs and football fans took him back in every time.

Football gets the players, and the players’ behaviour, it deserves and actively encourages.

Links >>> Official website >>> Blades Mad message board >>> Sheffield Star local newspaper >>> A United View blog >>> S24SU Blog >>> Vital Sheff Utd

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TacticalR added 18:10 - Jan 3
Thanks for your oppo profile.

'Replacing Warnock with Bryan Robson is a footballing version of hiring Harold Shipman to turn around your local GP practice.' Very good. Presumably the attraction was that Bryan Robson was a big name? That seems to be how a lot of clubs think (ourselves included).

'Clough in danger of being known as a ship steadier rather than a promotion achiever.' Depending on circumstances there are times when everyone wants a steady ship, but I wonder if he is going to need to rethink his style to achieve anything significant in the game?
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