I certainly agree that everything aligned against us last season in an extraordinary way that seemingly could only happen to Sheffield United, at a point when we had seemingly unstoppable momentum. A couple of incidents aside, however, I'm not sure that our struggles this year are due to bad luck.
I am utterly convinced that, at the point the season was suspended, the team was so well-drilled and so clearly in the same mind-set that we had 12 months previously in the promotion run-in, that we would have secured a European finish and would have been in at least the semi-final of the Cup.
There's no way that we wouldn't have won at Villa who were in crisis; no way we'd have folded at Newcastle and Man U with them under pressure from their fickle and critical crowds; no way we wouldn't have overcome Everton with the Lane rocking for the final home match; and no way a flaky Arsenal team would have won at the Lane in the Cup.
Our extreme misfortune was that all the advantage of our momentum was killed and, moreover, that the established clubs were given 3 months in which to reset their focus and get all their big players back from injury for the restart. A number of clubs (e.g. Man U, Newcastle, Arsenal) were also able to play free from the hindrance of their negative crowds which completely changed the dynamic.
We then topped it off, of course, with that fateful 'final training session' before the re-start at Villa when Fleck got injured and Henderson crocked JOC utterly pointlessly in a 'full-tilt training game'. Talk about 'sliding-doors moments' in the club's history. No wonder, Wilder was unusually spiky in his post-match interview after the Villa game.
This season, though, we have arguably had some fortune but simply haven't been good enough to capitalise on it.
We were handed Wolves first up at the Lane, when Wolves had had no pre-season; we had Villa where it was their first game so we theoretically we had the advantage of having a game under our belts; we were handed 2 of the promoted sides within the first 3 home games; we played at Liverpool when they were in the throes of a defensive crisis; and Man City came to the Lane without their strikers and struggling for goals.
Yes, we had misfortune with Egan's sending off at Villa but even then, it was our own ineptitude from the penalty spot that ensured we didn't come home with the points; Villa did next to nothing in that game. Similarly, we were unfortunate that Arsenal weren't reduced to 10 men inside 5 minutes but, ultimately, until our abysmal substitutions, that was a game that was not going to be lost because Arsenal were doing nothing. And the referee got it wrong against Leeds but, we still failed to take any number of gilt-edged chances against one of the leakiest defences in the division.
though has been questionable in most other games
