Comfort in the grey zone

While the West Brom and Norwich results leave us looking unlikely for the play-offs, when it comes to disappointing Sheffield United performances, multiple things can be true at once

David Taylor

Firstly, an admission: I’m worried I might have played a small part in the last two rather disheartening matches. Full of encouragement that we were keeping pace with those above us vying for sixth spot, and eyeing a chance of losing at Wembley again, I finished an episode of The Pinch Podcast with a glib line about winning our next three games, starting with West Bromwich Albion. I wasn’t being serious, but the football gods seemingly listened and laughed.

Two deeply disappointing results. An uninspired 1-1 draw against a poor West Brom and a 2-1 away loss to Norwich after taking the lead and retreating like a hermit crab (our centrebacks notwithstanding). Post-match postmortems are never the cheeriest of exercises after a bad game, but these two, in the context of keeping our season going after such a great recovery and other teams somehow conspiring to keep us in the fight, were particularly difficult to brush off.

I’m certainly not going to try to dissect the 25/26 season in this piece – not when there are still games left to play. But it feels like we all need a quick reminder that jumping to conclusions is more likely to end with a tweaked hamstring than any notable insight.

While walking out of the ground at full time and doomscrolling social media on the way home, I’ve heard and read a phonebook of reasons reeled off for our recent performances. Players letting themselves down with insipid showings; a lack of leadership; overly-cautious tactics and sub-par team talks; disastrous recruitment across (and from) the board. Any and all of these things might be true – I’m inclined to think so. But in our world of black and white ‘hot takes’, where Arsenal Fan TV and Mark Goldbridge seem to have become the framework for successful fan opinion and Jamie O’Hara continues to forge a career in punditry, the number of people blaming a singular thing for our woes and ignoring the rest has been baffling to see.

It can’t be good for us: the rollercoaster of ecstasy and disaster, joy and fury. But don’t worry, as multiple things can be true at once. Take Chris Wilder, for instance. You can celebrate his victories, that he saved Sheffield United from another decade of lower league anonymity (and perhaps worse), while acknowledging that he’s not an infallible football management automaton. We earned 92 points last season through being disciplined, scoring the decisive goal and becoming dab hands in ‘game management’. Yet, we fell short, and this year, with a worse overall squad thanks to some confusing recruitment, the fine margins we thrived on last time out have turned against our favour and there’s a hint of stubbornness when it comes to adapting to this.

Then again, we’ve ultimately survived a grotesquely awful start to the season quite comfortably, and we have the team and re-ordained manager to thank for that. Players will come and go in summer and hopefully lead us to a better set-up. The owners have learnt a tough lesson. See? Multiple things.

As those who sit around me at home matches know all too well, it can be hard for anyone to retain a degree of calm when the team you support isn’t playing the way you know it can. The trick is to find your place in the grey zone – where various elements are at play, where an individual performance can combine with a drop in team solidity and a bad refereeing decision. Those continuous skirmishes between the acolytes of Chris the Redeemer and the rabid Never-Wilders attest to a wider, creeping mindset that can’t navigate uncertainty, that needs someone or something to be at ultimate fault.

The men’s first team is in a bit of a grey zone itself right now. The players will be having doubts about our chances of success, but they’re not on the beach yet. Pessimists (or as they’d call themselves, realists) have made peace with mid-table, but others still think we can clamber our way to sixth. When people say it’s the hope that kills you, they’re meaning the fallout. With our history, that should be water off a duck’s back by now.

So, try not to flip between the end of your tether and cloud nine; don’t find yourself saying “season’s over” one day and “we’re so back” the next. The grey zone is nothing to fear.

On the other hand, if we beat Birmingham tomorrow, I tip us to go up.