Worst season of mine, and many fans lives

[Silent Blade]

But we did beat L**ds (albeit after relegation was confirmed).

I was there. Woody cracker from outside the box

 

[The Bear]

Derby hold the record with 29 defeats from 38 games. 1 win and 8 draws

Along with Sunderland (05-06) and Ipswich (94-95)

 

[Drunk blade]

Been watching us 30 odd years and this is the worst season for me.

1. Most importantly we cant go to the games

2. We've spent millions on some utterly shit players that look like they couldn't care less whether we win or lose or whether they even get a game. Just love seeing the happy smiling training photos after we've just been dicked again... A number of the current squad are simply pricks that are robbing the club

3.The games are non events, just tedious to watch, we treat every game like we're playing the world beating Barcelona side of a few years back and just have to try and hang on and keep the score down. We pack the defence every game, the manager even refers to us as having a back 8 and players like Lookman are given the same respect as Messi in his prime should be.

 

[ATL Recs]

Started supporting this club as a 4 year old in 1993.

We've been through some shit as fans, we've not had it easy, but my god, this season is so far above the worst season ever, I don't think it will ever be beaten by a worse one in future. Truly awful circumstances for fans, but also awful circumstancers for players, too. They are human just like fans, they are having to play in conditions that a year ago nobody would have thought would ever happen. In July last year, playing sometimes 3 games in 7 days, causing injuries which not only fucked us, but also other clubs like Liverpool. Do we seriously believe Liverpool would have lost 7-2 against Villa had fans been in stadiums?

I think as fans, we accepted relegation in December but hoped we would not break Derby's unwanted record (which we probably won't). I've been thinking for the past 2-3 months, lets just get this season over, and reinforce in the summer and go again. I look at teams like Norwich, who also finished dead last last season and are now flying with a few loan signings, whilst only losing 2 players for big money (Lewis and Godfrey).

In terms of our current team, realistically I can't see anyone paying the money we would ask for JOC, Berge after long injuries, so I'm pretty confident they'll be back with us next season.

Lundstram will almost certainly leave, and I'd expect others such as Osborn, Robinson, Moussett and maybe Stevens to leave to allow us to recoup some of the losses we will incur due to relegation.

Norwood - Although he's had a poor season this year, he's got 3 promotions to the PL with 3 different clubs, he'll be one of the best players in the Championship, again.
Fleck - He'll be one of the top midfielders in the league.
Ramsdale - He'll be one of the top GK's in the league
JOC - Will be one of the best CB's in the league
Egan - Will be one of the best CB's in the league
Basham - Still has a lot to give, great servant
Baldock - Will be one of the best wing back's in the league
Bogle - Will be one of the best wing back's in the league
Sharp - Will have a role to play in the Championship
Brewster - Has experience scoring in Champioonship
McBurnie - Has experience scoring in Championship

I believe with a few loanee's and a few new midfielders, we will be comfortably one of the best teams in the division. As much as relegation hurts, we're a stronger team for it.

I look at Sunderland, Ipswich, Bolton, Hull, Portsmouth, who all eventually overspent in the Premier League to "compete" it didn't work, and they came down worse for it (some suffering bakruptcy). We are opposite and I think we owe Wilder and the board credit for that.

For that reason, we should go with this management team.. and the most important part of this? We will all be there!

Chrissy Wilder and Alan Knill..... ♪♪

Bit deluded that pal why stick with the ones who can’t cut it in this division new Norwood needed new Bash needed new Mcgoldrick needed bring in younger athletic versions that can make the step up and sustain it strikers .... no comment
This team unless it’s tinkered with will be mid table
Watford Bournemouth Fulham West Brom possibly Brighton or Newcastle 5 clubs that could be in the champions all better than us at this time

 

[Mad Mick]

Maybe but you dont just press the esc key or delete button at the end of the season. This shit sticks and I am not sure Wilder is tough enough to resolve it. Why he now blames everything but himself is beyond me. Playing 4-4-2 against Liverpool we looked a lot better. Why not start like that ffs? Instead it's the George Graham approach to football and for those old enough the Jack Charlton boring Middlesbrough approach prior to Graham.

Football is about entertainment. If we lost games 2-5 at least we'd bloody well score! It is turgid awful crap and only two people are responsible for that Wilder and Knill. We've gone from exciting to bloody shite and boring, constantly giving the ball away in possession that leads to goals conceded.

If you keep making the same mistakes.... then bloody well do something about it ! It isn't rocket science it is one of life's early lessons, that most people learn. Clearly Wilder has forgotten that and for that the management take responsibility. Thankfully only 12 more games to put up with this bollocks.

I think you miss my point. I was comparing this season with some of the dross that has been served up to us in the last few years whilst JL94x4 has been supporting us. I went even further and looked back to some of the black moments since I have been a Blade, that's over 60 years. Quite frankly there is no comparison between some of the shite we have played in the past or the dark days of getting relegated to the 4th division.

 

[The Bear]

I think you miss my point. I was comparing this season with some of the dross that has been served up to us in the last few years whilst JL94x4 has been supporting us. I went even further and looked back to some of the black moments since I have been a Blade, that's over 60 years. Quite frankly there is no comparison between some of the shite we have played in the past or the dark days of getting relegated to the 4th division.

Well at the risk of a score draw , my point was fight by CW, not so much the team.

I think if he said look we came up, we gave it a go we had a great season but this year its chickens coming home to roost, a combination of poor investment decisions to whch I'll openly put my hands up to, lack of crowds, loss of key personel, a need to buy the ground and essentiallly a non PL squad no disrespect to my players whove largely come up from the Championship means our stay in the top tier is not likely to be long, but we're still going to give it a go and mark my words we will, we will be back.

Instead like at Fulham all this shit about them being in the PL 15 out of 20 years or whatever and playing like we were up against PSG is just so negative it does a lot of supporters heads in.

 

[Mad Mick]

I don't think we disagree, but I suppose I'm answering the OP's question directly. Let's just hope next season we can come back up. I firmly believe we can and I still think CW is the man to do it. Hopefully, he will have learnt a lot from the season. I must say the way we played against Fulham was woeful.

 

[Champagneblade]

This season would have been a lot more palatable had we just cried "Covid!" gone into our shells and just tried to make do.

We'd have been on a similar points total.

We'd have probably seen more of Sharp and McGoldrick as a pairing and they have been leading the way.

I'm pleased Rammers is hopefully coming good. But 18m seemed a massively disproportionate amount of money to spend on a keeper for us, at this point. To name but a few - Marshall who went from Wigan to Derby, Etheridge Cardiff to Birmingham, Raya at Brentford, Samba at Forest all would have been available for far less and done a competent job. That's before you look at loans such as Romero or frees such as Hart. Again if he's our keeper over 5 years and successful then excellent but as an outlay when other areas are falling short it seemed a hell of a lot. Verrips has done well with Emmen so far. Did Chris just not want to play him because the recommendation may have come from out of his immediate circle?

Brewster. If he was plugging away and failing you could see it as investment in the future. But he's not done anywhere near enough to impress Wilder to be given any game time. I'd be interested to know how many on here would take a full refund vs persevere. It's been McGoldrick plus one. Sharp, McBurnie, Burke all offer something different. Mousset's injury was a blow, but for such a big outlay, I'd rather have not bothered. Ok to say it is spread over a number of years. It still has to be paid and all transfers are like that. When you think Toney was available for 5m, riding to 10m, we massively overpaid. It almost felt with this and Rammers some sort of point was being made to the hierarchy.

Even Max Lowe. Granted, we needed a right back competition with Freeman moving on, so by all means get Bogle but left back? We had Stevens and Osborn, neither of whom we were moving on.

I agree- All of this talk about worst season of my life is such a load of shit - it’s all about expectations, and getting your head out of your arse and seeing the sun.

We have just had the best 4 seasons in my (since 1971 season ticket ) memory. Last season we overperformed to a huge extent riding on a wave of Wilder emotion.

Roygbiv saying worst season ever is wrong. In 74/75 we were on the edge of Europe and in 75/76 against the top 19 clubs we had 7 points (in today’s money) from 26 games. That was my worst season as we had debt, were selling off our best players to pay for a stand and a cross-toothed inarticulate manager who had less ideas aout football tactics than my dead grandmother.

Our average position in English football over the last 50 years is 30. We are going into the Championship next season with no debt, with a great owner and manager and coach (PA/Wilder/Knill) and a host of young players with potential.

For fuck’s sake get rid of this Billy big Bollocks attitude and see where we have been recently and where we can go with what this owner/ manager/ coach have built.

Magic isn’t really Magic - it’s about Knowledge, Planning and Patience.

I'm not a fan of looking back so far to when we were dreadful to somehow feel better about an hugely disappointing season. However it has been 4 seasons forward and now it will be one back. Not the worst net outcome overall.

My main concern is how we play from here.

I was slightly worried by Jim's tweet the other day


We need to show some ambition, recruit well and aggressively and be strong when it comes to bids. Norwich didn't just level the squad at the onset of relegation. We have to avoid doing the same. The squad should be stronger than the one promoted, wages will have a relegation clause in them and we have the parachute money so we should not be in the bottom quarter on resources. We need to make it count. We've already failed to capitalise on a 9th place finish, through many circumstances. Let's not also fail to capitalise on 2 year's worth of PL money an parachute payment money.

 

[benn5712]

I don't think we disagree, but I suppose I'm answering the OP's question directly. Let's just hope next season we can come back up. I firmly believe we can and I still think CW is the man to do it. Hopefully, he will have learnt a lot from the season. I must say the way we played against Fulham was woeful.

Like a few Mick, I'm resigned to being relegated and have been for a while. It's what happens next that bothers me.
You, like me, will remember dropping to division 3 for the first time. We played well and things looked good until... we'll not say anymore. Imploded. Don't want that
to happen again and I don't think it will but the pressure to win from the start next season may already be on.
Look at 75-6, down by about March and won four from last six matches. Some positive results/performances to end this one go into next season are badly needed.

 

[djbaldken]

The worst season for me was definitely when we went down to the 4th division. I'm sure at the time we had something like 5 games in hand over everyone else at the bottom. All we needed was a point from any one of them. We still managed to lose them all.
It felt so bad cause there was always hope. Hope we d avoid the inevitable Hope that we d scrape that point from somewhere. Hope that Givens would save us in the dying seconds.
Now there's no hope at all. We are down.

 

[Bladered]

It's not even a real season, just write it off. It will be written about as a season that had crazy results and circumstances for years to come.

Write it off and hope that we're not shit when things are 'normal' again.

EXACTLY

 

[Jimmy Fleck]

sorry but this is fucking stupid, we finished 11th in LEAGUE ONE a few years ago, yes we lose basically every week but at least it’s against world class players and not pub teams.

 

[wadblade]

The worst season ever in our history we finished 1st.

1981-82.

It's as simple as that for me.

ok the 1980-81 season was die is that better

 

[Davalon]

It's all subjective and personal.

This feels like one of the worst in my 40 years watching us because I've never seen us be realistically resigned to our fate so early whilst playing such a predictable boring style.

Throw in Covid and how quickly we've gone downhill after some of the best seasons I've seen just makes it that much more dramatic.

Yeah we've obviously had much poorer teams and spent years in the third tier recently but even under Adkins we were still hoping for the play offs with a couple of games to go.

To make matters worse we should still be feeling some positivity about being in a good position to bounce back next season but it doesn't feel that way to me.

Doing a Norwich, West Brom and being a yoyo club is success for us but selling off the best players and not really replacing key players or strengthening the gaps would be so Sheffield United.

Hoping it will be different this time.

 

[blade67]

An ubershite season compounded by not being able to vent in person, but the league one wilderness years felt more depressing tbh.

The Adkins season was the worst. Much worse than this.
Ive almost forgotten how shit the relegation to div 4 was. Micky Adams was pretty shit too

 

[MalmoBlade]

Still a quarter of the season to go and CW doesn't have a clue how to improve performances (his own words)

It's been a great ride and if we see signs of things changing to the season end then I'm on board with CWAK for another pop but let's be honest if Chris was Welsh or French we'd be waving shoes by now

 

[ATL Recs]

How can anyone say it's not the worst? We haven't been to a single game, how can anything be worse than that?? I'd take League One forever rather than not going to a game forever.

Those who don't go to games anyway might have an argument, but even then I'd say this takes some beating. We've lost 21 out of 26 fucking games and only scored 15 goals!

16

 

[Mumbo]

The worst season for me was definitely when we went down to the 4th division. I'm sure at the time we had something like 5 games in hand over everyone else at the bottom. All we needed was a point from any one of them. We still managed to lose them all.
It felt so bad cause there was always hope. Hope we d avoid the inevitable Hope that we d scrape that point from somewhere. Hope that Givens would save us in the dying seconds.
Now there's no hope at all. We are down.

Thank Givens day was the worst ever.

If you are gonna get relegated it’s always much worse when it goes to the wire,at least we’ve become accustomed to relegation this season with plenty of time to let in sink in.
Was it under Warnock when we were about 7th from bottom at half-time but by full times were down and out?,it’s hard to recover from that and it started a long decline.

 

[ancientblade]

Thank Givens day was the worst ever.

If you are gonna get relegated it’s always much worse when it goes to the wire,at least we’ve become accustomed to relegation this season with plenty of time to let in sink in.
Was it under Warnock when we were about 7th from bottom at half-time but by full times were down and out?,it’s hard to recover from that and it started a long decline.

was at chelsea in 94 wasnt it under bassett but got to agree with you getting relegated to the old division 4 was the lowest point in the clubs history awful awful day

 

[Kop sufferer]

I've been going to the Lane the thick end of 60 yearsyears

 

[Kop sufferer]

I've been going to the Lane the thick end of 60 yearsyears

Sorry fat fingers, what I'm trying to say, in my 60 plus years going to the Lane, it's been very very bad, very bad and bad, let me tell you now at this point in time it's not even got to the bad stage yet. Still time to achieve a bad though.
CW said yesterday, it's no longer OK, to play OK, he looked well pissed off, but I think he means major surgery is coming if this carries on.

 

[McGrath]

It's no where near the worst season for me. Despite it all there's hope for the future and I'd rather be getting beat by Liverpool and Man City than any League One team.

So I'd take a bad season in the Premier League over 5 out of the 6 recent League One seasons.

Plus, we're still better than Wednesday

 

[CarlMcBlade]

Yes the worst season, preceded by four of the best. Our progress has simply fallen off the edge of a cliff.

 

[Drunk blade]

16 goals scored so far this season the lowest of any team in all the European leagues, if we're lucky we might see another 4 before the season is over

 

[Sheffsteel]

Norwood - Although he's had a poor season this year, he's got 3 promotions to the PL with 3 different clubs, he'll be one of the best players in the Championship, again.
Fleck - He'll be one of the top midfielders in the league.
Ramsdale - He'll be one of the top GK's in the league
JOC - Will be one of the best CB's in the league
Egan - Will be one of the best CB's in the league
Basham - Still has a lot to give, great servant
Baldock - Will be one of the best wing back's in the league
Bogle - Will be one of the best wing back's in the league
Sharp - Will have a role to play in the Championship
Brewster - Has experience scoring in Champioonship
McBurnie - Has experience scoring in Championship

I believe with a few loanee's and a few new midfielders, we will be comfortably one of the best teams in the division. As much as relegation hurts, we're a stronger team for it.

Agree...that we'll have several more than decent players which would normally result in a strong promotion challenge HOWEVER

the big problem for me....is that we've stopped using our system....and now we look clueless at chance creation.
So next season does Wilder return to his overlapping centre back system that's been so successful?
However we need some creativity..a Duffy type and McGoldrick is getting older.
Also we were lucky is that we found 2 centre backs O'Connell and Basham that had great engines and were decent getting forward and putting in crosses.
Will O'Connell be the same? Basham is getting older so probably won't be as mobile?
We're relying on our younger players to step up to the plate....like McBurnie and Brewster

Some big decisions for Wilder regards whether we return to our tried and tested successful system or start afresh.
At least he'll have a proper season and have plenty of time to prepare over the Summer.
Confidence will be very low....so it's essential we get off to a decent start and score a few goals.

 

[blade too long]

Agree...that we'll have several more than decent players

the big problem for me....is that we've stopped using our system....and now we look clueless at chance creation.

im sure any manager we bring in will have some clues on how to set up
might resort to 442 or 433 or 41212 352 541

but it is time to change as whatever we have been doing has not been delivering
we are blessed with really good championship players

whoever comes in we have to cut out the passing back and getting caught in possesion and being left light at the back

but with fans back we will compete

argued long in here we are an unlucky club and some say luck doesnt play a part

but to get back to the prem and only get to see 14 of 38 home games is as unlucky as it gets
ok for them estabalished clubs , they know what its like
we were just settling in nicely
we needed the crowds to up the arenalin of our not quite as good players
without that lift weve been exposed

 

[JJ Sefton]

It’s the worst season I remember (I go back to 1988). We went down scrapping to the end in 1994 and 2007, and as crap as we were in 2011, at least it wasn’t under such a spotlight. What bothers me isn’t that the quality isn’t there - it frequently wasn’t under Bassett and Warnock - but that the mentality isn’t either. The players and staff have been resigned to relegation since very early on. The quality problem will be less next season by virtue of being in a lower league, but I don’t see any sign of the mentality being sorted. I’d love to be playing us first game next season.

I was wrong about the quality problem, but I’d stand by the rest.

 

[breeny]

15/16 was worse