What gone wrong since 1976

[Barney]

Money

We can't mention this or complain about it when collectively as a fanbase we're doing bugger all to usher the prince to try to sell up. Hopefully he already knows he has to, but there seems to be basically no insistence from fans.

 

[georgebernardshaw]

Also, my Dad always said it was the Munich aircrash, and the sympathy that they got afterwards that propelled them above City. Along with Busby, Best, Law and Charlton, that was the roll they climbed on and never looked back from really.
And, until the mid 60s, when Liverpool FC got associated with The Beatles, Everton were the most successful club on Merseyside, both on the pitch and with higher attendances.....

Shankly….

 

[3-GBlade]

My Dad - and I am not joking - suspected that me taking an interest and the late 70s demise were more closely linked than they should be!!

 

[Champagneblade]

I think in our own way we tried to set a blue print to set us up for the next 5+ years. We could have been a Leicester - We just failed appallingly at it.

We focused on buying young players to build a team around that could improve, sell on and the replenish. The issue being our player selection was abysmal in terms of the players recruited, and the areas we chose to recruit.

I still believe that if we had invested the £50m from the end of the second season better, we would have at least been in a battle to stay up - a proper LCB replacement, a CM to replace Lundstram, an Experienced goalie (Ramsdale did come good but his first 6 months were shaky and part of our bad start - too much risk for a team in our position transitioning from a World class goal keeper)

We've made a series of poor decisions when well placed by getting ahead of ourselves, punctuated by some at best hopeful managerial appointments (Inching forward anyone?).

Under Bassett, 4 years was a decent run and then we seemed to think we could absorb selling Brian Deane and didn't adequately replace him "well done gentlemen, you've just relegated us" Bassett said in the boardroom meeting.

Under Spackman, we were well placed playing great football but didn't know when to stop spending, bringing in too many strikers only to redress the balance by selling Deane and Fjortoft on the same day.

Under Warnock, we were clear by about 10 points at a point in the season. Yes there was Tevez and Hulse but the January transfer window spend of 5m did little to address a midfield that lacked quality with Tonge it's main creator, signing Fathi, a fullback, as the main option there and once more getting ahead of ourselves signing Shelton when a better midfielder for now would have been more useful.

Sacking Blackwell having allowed him to recruit all summer and also cashing in greedily on both Kyles was totally unnecessary and teed us up nicely to get relegated out of nowhere.

Ched Evans then getting ahead of himself rather than having a pizza and going home kept us down far longer than required but also Danny Wilson's only management decision needed that season woefully saw us attempt to mitigate by getting Hoskins(crock), Beattie(past it) and O'Halloran(rubbish).

Subsequently followed by Blackman being offloaded to be replaced by Jonathan Forte in another Kamikaze Board decision especially on the back of injuries to Shaun Miller and DeGirolamo.

After a season of promise, Clough totally losing the plot on recruitment was another after we'd sold Maguire having spent silly money on Brayford.

Under Wilder, in the top flight, we got away with signings who did a bit the first season but provided no long term advancement I e. 10/11 starters were out of the promotion XI yet we spent 60m trying to replace the guy who scored 24 goals to get us up. We failed to improve the infrastructure and once more got ahead of ourselves, addressing the nice to have of owning our own keeper and trying for an alternative forward option whilst not filling the O'Connell shaped hole in the defence or tackling Lundstram's need for further replacing and upgrading the midfield.

You could post an alternative - are we the unluckiest team alive thread too - Hans Segers, Tevez/Hulse, Ched, Diego/Miller, Coutts (which saw promotion delayed a year), O'Connell which would all have been plausible reasons however that would also ignore the fact we've had plenty of chance to do ourselves a favour in all those seasons and failed to do so.

 

[S64 Blade]

As a Man City fan who lurks on here, let me add to this. Between the start of the 20th century and the beginning of WW2, we had bigger gates than our out-of-city rivals in around three-quarters of the seasons and finished higher in the league in more than two-thirds. There's no doubt which was the bigger club at that point, and it wasn't them. Nor were they close to being on an equal footing.

In addition to the three trophies we won, we had two losing FA Cup finals and the odd unsuccessful tilt at the league title. We'd also set a number of crowd records, whereas their support was generally poor in relative terms. Man United simply had one purple patch, funded by huge (by the standards of the time) funding from a sugar-daddy between 1908 and 1911. To do that, they nabbed four of our players, two of them being their star performer and their top scorer, when the FA forced us to sell our entire squad as punishment for an illegal payments scandal. We poached their manager in 1912, though, and they never really threatened to enjoy any success again pre-Busby.

Then it turned on its head, but one significant factor that people usually miss was them sharing Maine Road while Old Trafford was unusable owing to bomb damage sustained in the War. They arrived heavily in debt, and went back a massive (by the standards of the time) £100K in the black, with lots of fans who'd started to watch both teams during their time at our place following them back to theirs when they returned in 1949. I've always said, only half-joking, that when they asked to share with us, with hindsight we should've told them to piss off to Salford RL. That's probably where they'd otherwise have had to go, and Busby probably wouldn't have joined them in 1945 had they been playing there.

I appreciate that no one else on here really gives a toss about this, so sorry for rambling on. As it's my team and the issue came up, I thought I'd add my bit. As for the actual topic of the thread, of course I'm an outsider but my impression has always been that it's extremely surprising that one of the Blades and the S6 porkers hasn't managed to become an established top-flight side and really become the dominant team in Sheffield. I suppose the oinkers had it in their hands in the 1990s and blew it.

As someone with a degree of affection for the Blades, I'm glad they did. But I'm sorry that the Blades had great chances in 1975, 2007 and 2020 to really become the major force in Sheffield and also let it slip. I don't know enough about why that was the case, but read threads like this with interest. It's always instructive to know what a team's own fans think. There's always a lot of stuff you never pick up as an outsider.

The antithesis of Mark the Pitsmoor Owl’s “brother”?

 

[robbiez666]

We can't mention this or complain about it when collectively as a fanbase we're doing bugger all to usher the prince to try to sell up. Hopefully he already knows he has to, but there seems to be basically no insistence from fans.

I can only hope, for your mental wellbeing, that you're joking.

No one in their right mind would want to take us on.

Squad on too high wages to sell
Places we rely on retiring
Players on long expensive contracts but not playing
only saleable assets have potentially career-ending/shortening injuries
Bloated and uneven squad
Crumbling and outdated facilities

 

[Nagima]

My view would be a lack of consistency in terms of long term strategy and managerial appointments. This has impacted on recruitment and lead to managers reinventing the wheel which leads to further instability.
Selling Deane and Fjortoft on the one day was a huge backward step and very short sighted.

There were big differences in playing styles between. Bassett, Warnock, Clough, Atkins, Wilder and now Slav. We were not consistent with the type of manager we wanted and ended up trying different flavours.

Season 1 & 2 in the PL under Wilder highlights the total mismatch in recruitment from what we needed and what we got. This has wasted the opportunity to put the club on a sound footing going forward.

You have to wonder do the board understand anything about football. Most fans I meet, particularly of the older generation have a real grasp on what is wrong and what is needed but it seems we have a board that either can't work together or don't understand what they are looking at.

 

[pommpey]

Very interesting takes from all angles on this and no one falling out.

It's good that we are all being introspective and examining the real reasons why we are so fated.

Still, to me, it's that Sheffield ... even as it rolls off the tongue ... epitomises non-glamour, hard-bitten working class prole-ism and yesterday's footballing city. Regardless of the historic precedence Sheffield has on much of the game, it's not far wrong. Again, we are not good enough to be good. If the image of the city changed and the tectonic plates of popular trends moved, maybe one of our clubs could be a worthy investment. For several seasons during the 90s, I did think this might be the pigs, but like us, it all comes crashing down.

pommpey

 

[jt64]

Just out of interest, how do you feel about your new generation of fans who expect you to win the League and at least one other trophy every year as if it was always the way?

It's not just the new generation, it's the old bastards as well, not those that think Maine Road is the big one that runs through your town

 

[Bell4]

Very interesting takes from all angles on this and no one falling out.

It's good that we are all being introspective and examining the real reasons why we are so fated.

Still, to me, it's that Sheffield ... even as it rolls off the tongue ... epitomises non-glamour, hard-bitten working class prole-ism and yesterday's footballing city. Regardless of the historic precedence Sheffield has on much of the game, it's not far wrong. Again, we are not good enough to be good. If the image of the city changed and the tectonic plates of popular trends moved, maybe one of our clubs could be a worthy investment. For several seasons during the 90s, I did think this might be the pigs, but like us, it all comes crashing down.

pommpey

Agree - proper stuff - fascinating to get different perspectives - we might come up with the answer in the end hey

 

[Snowflake]

Yeah but, if you listen to some on here - black pinstripes is a "United Thing" and no black makes us "look like Stoke"

The best shirts we've had (with the exception of the 1992) don't have the black pinstripes.

For me, these are the best shirts in no particular order, well actually, they're in chronological order...

View attachment 125087View attachment 125088View attachment 125089View attachment 125090View attachment 125091View attachment 125092View attachment 125093

My brain says “ white shorts equals relegation”!
How true that is I don’t know but it must have happened at least once in the last 50 years, so I don’t like them.

 

[Snowflake]

We can't mention this or complain about it when collectively as a fanbase we're doing bugger all to usher the prince to try to sell up. Hopefully he already knows he has to, but there seems to be basically no insistence from fans.

...because of the huge risks involved in selling to one of the many who have made such a mess of ownership in the last 20 years.
Just look at the couple who own Reading or even closer to home !!

 

[ancientblade]

since following united from the early 60s only twice have we speculated by spending money on players once under brearley and once under this board of course we know what happened to that 120m but sheffield football fortunes have always swung backwards and forwards usually in 4/5 year spells we really have missed a golden chance to be the dominant force in the city over the last 18 months

 

[Lane Ender]

Never having a rich and competent owner at any point is the main crux of it.

100%

 

[ZoneManWilf]

I was born and the world's doing it to spite me.

 

[JJBlade]

The trouble is I think JJBlade might just be onto something it is not just United who have been shite so have the pigs apart from a few seasons in the early 90's when they spent a fortune they didn't have (still suffering from it to this day). the fortunes of both clubs pretty much mirror the fortunes of Sheffield and it's left wing councils. Pretty much everything Sheffield has done since the early 70's has turned to dust and has been left behind by a cotton town and a wool town. Fuck me Manchester even has a museum billed as the home of football and Leeds a museum for the royal armouries in a city that has never made a ton of steel throughout it's history. You couldn't make it up our council back the home of popular music when Sheffield has never been a city renowned for it's musical talent. Sheffield died with it's steel industry all we have now is students and a city centre of empty buildings where druggies, piss heads and homeless sleep in doorways by night and beg by day.

Thanks MB
It's a theory that I stand by regardless of what others think

Any city with 600,000 people and a City Region of 1,500,000 with two "biggish" football clubs in any other area of the country would have immediate interest from all forms of business wanting to be there.
And this would mean interest in major investment in its football clubs too.

Succesful football clubs cannot thrive in a depressed area, the type of footfall that investors want in the stadium don't exist in great enough numbers in Sheffield.

That's Sheffields own fault for deterring business instead of encouraging it.

Sheffield is now a Stoke, or a Hull, or a Middlesboro, when 30 years ago it was every bit in line with a Manchester, a Leeds and a Liverpool.

 

[PaulHalfway]

The sad thing is that both clubs have fabulous fan bases, any sign of improvement or success and the fans will rock up

 

[JJBlade]

The sad thing is that both clubs have fabulous fan bases, any sign of improvement or success and the fans will rock up

They have PH as much as we take the piss out of each other

But that's the problem, being Sheffielders, they watch the party that the other clubs are having, and then brag about how they found the biggest chicken leg that one of them threw away.

 

[Davalon]

The sad thing is that both clubs have fabulous fan bases, any sign of improvement or success and the fans will rock up

Tbf when you look at how both have done so far this season and our joint average must be around 50,000, it shows what could be achieved with slightly bigger stadia and some consolidation in the Prem.

 

[SUFC Handsworth]

Great thread. I'd say what has always held United back has been third rate Chairman/Boardrooms. No ambition, drive or imagination, and you could apply that to the powers that be in Sheffield. It's a small time mentality that has stunted SUFC and Sheffield for decades. And while there's enough punters who'll accept it, it'll always go on.

I remember a similar thread not that long ago on here, although it was aimed more about Sheffield as a third rate city. I made a point about developing Sheffield station all the way out to the tram stops at Granville Road, where upon it got pointed out the station has listed status, hence it's always got to be shit. Ditto with the eye sore Park Hill flats. Some one in authority in Sheffield please challenge it, lets drive this city forward. It'll never happen because far too many in Sheffield just accept second, third or fourth best.

United as a club (and ditto Sheffield as a city) need a visionary with drive and ambition to move us forward and at least punch our weight.

PS ... the other reason for United doing shit since 1976 was kicking Yorkshire CCC out in 1973.

 

[Chris the Blade]

City full of small minded people run by a small minded left wing council who couldn't attract outside investment if their lives depended on it.

 

[CarlMcBlade]

ABH s post in said thread

`Yes we would be a top 10 Championship club. But I'd like folk's views on what has changed so much since 1976. Our history before this had mainly been mid-table 1st tier, with the occasional better season, and then a shite season to get relegated. A couple of years in Tier 2, then we'd expect to be promoted. Until 1978, we had never finished below 11th in the 2nd Tier. Looking at this, http://alltimeleaguetable.co.uk/ , we rank 18th in the all-time League positions. And this is skewed lower because of our big downturn since 1976. All the original clubs are still there that were there in 1976. And it's not as if our position has been pushed down by the likes of Barcelona, Real, Bayern, Juventus, Ajax, Benfica, Dortmund etc. joining our League is it?
So what's changed to make us so much worse since '76?`

I blame the South Stand...

 

[CarlMcBlade]

Great thread. I'd say what has always held United back has been third rate Chairman/Boardrooms. No ambition, drive or imagination, and you could apply that to the powers that be in Sheffield. It's a small time mentality that has stunted SUFC and Sheffield for decades. And while there's enough punters who'll accept it, it'll always go on.

I remember a similar thread not that long ago on here, although it was aimed more about Sheffield as a third rate city. I made a point about developing Sheffield station all the way out to the tram stops at Granville Road, where upon it got pointed out the station has listed status, hence it's always got to be shit. Ditto with the eye sore Park Hill flats. Some one in authority in Sheffield please challenge it, lets drive this city forward. It'll never happen because far too many in Sheffield just accept second, third or fourth best.

United as a club (and ditto Sheffield as a city) need a visionary with drive and ambition to move us forward and at least punch our weight.

PS ... the other reason for United doing shit since 1976 was kicking Yorkshire CCC out in 1973.

Ah yes, the Yorkshire cricket curse.

 

[Nicolaus_Copernicus]

Sheffield, I suppose, could justly claim to be called the ugliest town in the Old World: its inhabitants, who want it to be pre-eminent in everything, very likely do make that claim for it. It has a population of half a million and it contains fewer decent buildings than the average East Anglian village of five hundred. And the stench! If at rare moments you stop smelling sulphur it is because you have begun smelling gas. Even the shallow river that runs through the town is usually bright yellow with some chemical or other. Once I halted in the street and counted the factory chimneys I could see; there were thirty-three of them, but there would have been far more if the air had not been obscured by smoke. One scene especially lingers in my mind. A frightful patch of waste ground (somehow, up there, a patch of waste ground attains a squalor that would be impossible even in London) trampled bare of grass and littered with newspapers and old saucepans. To the right an isolated row of gaunt four-roomed houses, dark red, blackened by smoke. To the left an interminable vista of factory chimneys, chimney beyond chimney, fading away into a dim blackish haze. Behind me a railway embankment made of the slag from furnaces. In front, across the patch of waste ground, a cubical building of red and yellow brick, with the sign ‘Thomas Grocock, Haulage Contractor’.

It seems to me, by daylight, one of the most appalling places I have ever seen. In whichever direction you look you see the same landscape of monstrous chimneys pouring forth smoke which is sometimes black and sometimes of a rosy tint said to be due to sulphur. You can smell the sulphur in the air all the while. All buildings are blackened within a year or two of being put up. Halting at one place I counted the factory chimneys I could see and there were 33. But it was very misty as well as smoky - there would have been many more visible on a clear day. I doubt whether there are any architecturally decent buildings in the town.

The town is very hilly (said to be built on seven hills, like Rome) and everywhere streets of mean little houses blackened by smoke run up at sharp angles, paved with cobbles which are purposely set unevenly to give horses etc., a grip. At night the hilliness creates fine effects because you look across from one hillside to the other and see the lamps twinkling like stars. Huge jets of flame shoot periodically out of the roofs of the foundries (many working night shifts at present) and show a splendid rosy colour through the smoke and steam. When you get a glimpse inside you see enormous fiery serpents of red-hot and white-hot (really lemon coloured) iron being rolled out into rails. In the central slummy part of the town are the small workshops of the 'little bosses', i.e. smaller employers who are making chiefly cutlery. I don't think I ever in my life saw so many broken windows. Some of these workshops have hardly a pane of glass in their windows and you would not believe they were inhabitable if you did not see the employees, mostly girls, at work inside.

The town is being torn down and rebuilt at an immense speed. Everywhere among the slums are gaps with squalid mounds of bricks where condemned houses have been demolished and on all the outskirts of the town new estates of Corporation houses are going up. These are much inferior, at any rate in appearance, to those at Liverpool. They are in terribly bleak situations, too. One estate just behind where I am living now, at the very summit of a hill, on horrible sticky clay soil and swept by icy winds. Notice that the people going into these new houses from the slums will always be paying higher rents; and also will have to spend much more on fuel to keep themselves warm. Also, in many cases, will be further from their work and therefore spend more on conveyances.

At night, when you cannot see the hideous shapes of the houses and the blackness of everything, a town like Sheffield assumes a kind of sinister magnificence. Sometimes the drifts of smoke are rosy with sulphur, and serrated flames, like circular saws, squeeze themselves out from beneath the cowls of the foundry chimneys. Through the open doors of foundries you see fiery serpents of iron being hauled to and fro by redlit boys, and you hear the whizz and thump of steam hammers and the scream of the iron under the blow.

When you contemplate such ugliness as this, there are two questions that strike you. First, is it inevitable? Secondly, does it matter?

 

[petrusha]

Just out of interest, how do you feel about your new generation of fans who expect you to win the League and at least one other trophy every year as if it was always the way?

I don't want to derail the thread. However, you've asked so I'll do you the courtesy of an answer.

I'd argue that it's not expectations that are a problem. Those are engendered by the amounts of money available to the club and the players it enables us to field, and I don't personally believe that thinking we might well win stuff in our current position is particularly unreasonable. What I dislike are people who seem to think that their club is somehow entitled to have success and who act like a smacked arse if it doesn't. I see quite a lot of Man City fans like that on social media, and they aren't exclusively new fans, either. But it seems to me that most clubs have plenty of knobhead fans on social media, which is a platform on which those who shout loudest get the attention and idiots tend to shout loudest, so I think it can give a misleading impression of any club's fans.

However, the kind of success we've had (and, yes, bought) does attract self-entitled smacked arses and it also turns some of the existing fans into self-entitled smacked arses as well so I don't deny that we have large numbers of them. Just how prevalent that type is among the fanbase as a whole is hard for me to judge, because I live abroad now and visit Manchester rarely.

I'd say the fellow fans among my mates who I keep in touch with and who, like me, are in their early fifties tend to be fairly philosophical about things. We accept that we basically won the lottery in terms of the money that's come into our club. We lament some of the changes in the club and the way it operates that mean we, as fans, feel more dissociated from it than we used to. Nonetheless, after years of us being shit, we enjoy not being shit any longer. We like watching players like Yaya Toure, David Silva and Sergio Aguero every week, and are happy to be managed by Pep Guardiola (though we recognise that, once he's left, we'll probably never have anyone quite that good again). We know that these things are cyclical so the success won't last forever. And when it stops, we'll still be supporting them, even if they slip to the Conference North.

I'm in the third generation of Man City fans in my family. Both of my parents had fathers and brothers who were supporters and took me to Maine Road when my dad worked on Saturdays, as he often did. In the fourth generation, there's only my nephew, who's currently 12, and he's never known anything but regular trophies and signings for huge money. I regard it as a duty to teach him about the past and to keep him grounded, as it would be a great pity if that was lost from the fanbase.

Also, my Dad always said it was the Munich aircrash, and the sympathy that they got afterwards that propelled them above City. Along with Busby, Best, Law and Charlton, that was the roll they climbed on and never looked back from really.
And, until the mid 60s, when Liverpool FC got associated with The Beatles, Everton were the most successful club on Merseyside, both on the pitch and with higher attendances.....

Yes, Munich definitely did generate a wave of sympathy for them. It was winning the European Cup in 1968 that really forged them a position as the most glamorous and best-supported team in the country, though. They topped the attendance charts in 1967/8 - the fifth time they'd ever done so. Of those, three had come in seasons when they'd been league champions, one was the season in which the Munich crash happened, and in 1967/8 they lost the title at the end but had been top nearly all season. In 1968/9, for the first time they had a fairly mediocre season while being the best-supported team, and they've only ever ceded that position in a handful of seasons since.

As for Merseyside, Everton under Harry Catterick managed to compete on a fairly equal footing with Shankly's Liverpool through the sixties and won the title in 1970. Since then, apart from that brief purple patch under Howard Kendall in the eighties, they really haven't got close to their neighbours in terms of success. They remain well supported but not close to the same level as the other lot.

I didn’t know that about City and United groundsharing.
With regard to your point about one Sheffield club becoming dominant, a Wednesday mate of mine pointed out that it’s a pattern with us that when one club does well (relatively speaking!) the other one goes into a nose dive. In the 47 years I have been watching, this has nearly always been the case. Could argue that early 90s with both in top flight for 4 seasons together we were both doing well but they were clearly a top side and we were perennial relegation battlers. Odd season we have been rubbish together, but even then, mostly different levels of rubbish, like last season.

To some degree, this has always been the same in Manchester. I suppose even now Man City are having more success than ever before, and Man United's standards have dropped.

Where Sheffield seems a bit different, at least to me looking from outside, is that the gap between the two clubs in terms of size is a lot narrower. Man City aren't close to being as big a club as Man United, and it would probably take decades of both continuing in their current vein for that to change. It would take a similar protracted turnaround on Merseyside for the balance to change there. As for Sheffield, I know that Wednesday like to bang on about what a massive club they are and see themselves as the big fish in the city, but looking at the historical league positions and attendance records, the difference isn't anything like as wide as you'd think just from listening to them.

If the Blades could get back up and consolidate in the Premier League, you'd collar a large majority of the support in the city from a whole generation of fans and would completely change the dynamic between the clubs. I'd love to see it - but this is a really interesting and informative thread for me in terms of understanding why it hasn't happened.

 

[Alan Birchenall's hair]

Always had a soft spot for Everton and City. My deep dislike of Liverpool FC (due to their 'More than a Club' attitude) fuels the Everton thing, and the arrogance of MU fans powers my liking for City. I live in a small village between Sheffield and Huddersfield where there are fans of a few clubs - Hudders, Barnsley, Wednesday, Sheff United and for some glory seekers, Man Utd. I can talk to all the other fans in the local pub, generally about how shit we all are, and they will reciprocate the interest. But for MU fans, MU is all they want to discuss. Entitled is what they are.
And when you support someone as shit as us, it's nice to view the Prem and take sides in matches (although not seriously like I do with Blades) , which is where Everton and City come in....

 

[Sheffsteel]

Small-time mentality, getting peanuts for players who then massively increase in value, playoff gypsy curse etc

Small time mentality of the fans means the club also adopts a small time mentality. To be honest anything to do with Sheffield is small time, shops that tend to thrive are Poundstretcher, 99p shop, Poundland etc, hence why those shops are in t city centre.

Also the general negativity and pessimism amongst the fan base.
Even in the late 1970’s, pensioners used to say to me “United….always the bridesmaid, never the bride”.

Whereas Liverpool could be 2 or even 3-0 down in the 1st leg of a European tie and their fans genuinely expect to still go through.
The reason is because their fans have seen it so many times over the devades, thrashing Europes best at Anfield, scoring last minute winners etc.
Where as over the decades i‘ve tended to see bad luck in our big matches, last minute goals scored against us etc.
So when ever we’re in a big match it often comes into my mind we’ll probably concede in the last minute.

 

[Chimpan-A]

Always had a soft spot for Everton and City. My deep dislike of Liverpool FC (due to their 'More than a Club' attitude) fuels the Everton thing, and the arrogance of MU fans powers my liking for City. I live in a small village between Sheffield and Huddersfield where there are fans of a few clubs - Hudders, Barnsley, Wednesday, Sheff United and for some glory seekers, Man Utd. I can talk to all the other fans in the local pub, generally about how shit we all are, and they will reciprocate the interest. But for MU fans, MU is all they want to discuss. Entitled is what they are.
And when you support someone as shit as us, it's nice to view the Prem and take sides in matches (although not seriously like I do with Blades) , which is where Everton and City come in....

I am exactly the same: always felt an affinity with City and Everton as I felt their rivals were Wednesday by another name, i.e. arrogant and entitled. Got to be honest though, I think Wednesdays delusions of grandeur don’t stand up to scrutiny: their trophy cabinet is almost as much a part of ancient history as ours is, and their self-appointed position as a true footballing side are based solely on a handful of seasons in the early 90s, conveniently ignoring their high profile long ball managers Charlton and Wilkinson.

 

[Chimpan-A]

United….always the bridesmaid, never the bride”.

Never been the bridesmaid either. We are the shy, slightly overweight lass from work who was only invited to the hen do to make up the numbers, and is the only one not invited to the church, just the evening do. But if you look a bit closer, and take the time to talk to her, you realise she is far more interesting, intelligent and in fact more beautiful than the bride and her gaggle of pouting bridesmaids.

 

[Edgar Allan Poo]

This topic started by ABH on Pomps` My Take thread -

Thought it would be good and interesting to get our views

Well, January started well, had my 16th birthday and somehow persuaded this funny, intelligent, beautiful girl to go out with me, got expelled from school though and she met someone else, my dad was constantly on my case telling me to "turn that bloody funeral music down" and that only takes us up to that summer.

Oh, wait is this about the footie....?