Thank you for the (opening) days

"Could this be our year?..." DeadBat on the magic of the first day of the season

David Beeden

The first day of the season is always special. Without fail it brings excitement, anticipation and perhaps even just relief that football is back. From being a child to growing up to being an adult (with a son of my own), the night before opening day is like Christmas Eve. Whether it is a game at home or away, the thought of meeting up with friends and family again, with a pre-game pint thrown in for good measure, is strangely but at the same time naturally exhilarating. 

Once inside the stadium, you notice small changes: the lick of paint to a stand you are sitting in, the new programme, and the sharp lines of a fresh pitch. The players emerge and your team adorns a new strip; new signings strut and the old guard, no matter what vitriol has been chucked at them before, get their lofty acclaim as they’re introduced. Every team, every player and every fan has a blank slate and it is a chance to start again. Could this be our year?

By full-time, the positivity may remain. It could be a resounding win. And a new player may have had everyone talking. Conversely, it could be a drab and flat performance and defeat. You may troop away and wonder why that a few hours previously your head was filled with quite so much anticipation.

Are we good starters?

Over pre-season, I’m sure every fan across the country develops an intuition about whether their team will be a ‘good starter.’ Do they traditionally get off to a flier, bounding out of the traps? Or are they a club that always seemingly needs time to get going? I thought about United, and I’m not sure that I can squarely put us into either category. We seem to go through waves. Peaks and troughs.

And in 20 of the last 40 seasons, the Blades have either gone up, gone down, or been part of the season-ending play-offs. So, it is true that it is rarely dull being a Blade.

I have been following United since around 1983-84. That’s 40 years of football. So I decided to look at this period, analysing our record in the first league game of each season. After the Palace game, we will have started 22/40 games at the Lane and our record is rather neatly mixed:

• 15 wins (12 wins at home)

• 14 losses (9 losses away)

• 11 draws (7 draws away)

That record reflects my remembering: we have had our equal share of success and failure over the years with all three possible results spread around fairly evenly. Getting a good start does not necessarily mean we will go on to have a good season and indeed we have mixed results in both positive and negative ending seasons.

Promotion seasons; of which there have been 7 in the last 40 years have seen 4 wins and 3 losses. The last 3 promotion seasons have seen us lose all the opening-day games. In terms of the relegation seasons, of which there have been 4 in the last 40 years, we have had 2 losses, 1 win and 1 draw.

Chris Wilder only won once in his five seasons at the club whereas Dave Bassett only lost twice out of eight opening-day games. Warnock was even better with just one loss out of seven matches.

We have faced some sides more than once – Gillingham x3 (two were 4-0 scorelines!), Watford x3, Bournemouth x2, Liverpool x2, Portsmouth x2 (both 2-0 scorelines in consecutive years!), Reading x2, Shrewsbury x2 and Wolves x2. 

Opening day games — 1983/84-2023/24

*Televised Game – 12 of the 40 – won 3, lost 6 and drew 3 – so maybe worry if we are selected for TV coverage!

Memories of not being there

I struggle to remember much about some of those games. Mainly because, the Covid season apart, I was away on holiday. Still, I reckon by a quick totting up I still was in attendance for 25/40 games listed. 

Oddly I have some clearer memories of the games I did not attend than some of the ones I did. It’s strange how you can place exactly where you were when games took place, even a long time ago.

I recall my family trying to buy a new sofa in a DFS-equivalent store whilst we were winning at Stoke on the first day of the 85-85 season: me twiddling the dial on my Walkman to find Bob Jackson on Radio Sheffield telling us Colin Morris had scored again.

I was playing in a pre-season football tournament when we lost 0-1 at Reading under Howard Kendall and was trying to get score updates in between 5-a-side games.

Being abroad on opening day brought new challenges. When I was younger, it might involve finding the results in a newspaper the morning after or the morning after that. I think that’s what happened in 1987-88. I remember reading one of our scorers as ‘Dean’ (misspelt) from the 3-1 win at Reading. I was mystified thinking I had never heard of this player. 

I also remember phoning my sister on a pay phone from Lanzarote and her telling me we had drawn 2-2 at Norwich and being quite pleased until she told us we had been winning 2-0 and had thrown it away late on with John Fleck’s Uncle Robert scoring twice for the home side.

Memories of the good, the bad and the ugly

These days, I am fairly relaxed if the season does not start well, especially considering how successful we have been after losses on opening day. But that ‘feel good’ can inject a bit of momentum if you get off to a winning start. I decided to delve into both: the particularly good opening days and those that were not so good.

5 Nightmare Opening Days

5) Bournemouth (H) – 1986-87. Lost 0-1.

Not a great time to be a Blades fan. Manager Billy McEwan had tried to shift some of the older players and the younger players were not ready. The little money he was given, he squandered on calamitous record signing Richard Cadette. I have a vague memory of the opening day and a loss to Bournemouth with a nothing sort of game and United showing why it would prove to be a season of struggle. I do remember being amused by the name of our new keeper, (Andy) Leaning. The goalkeeper saved a penalty but United were poor in front of a crowd of less than 10,000.

However, the main reason I remember this, is that at the time, I thought I had forgotten to lock the car door (days where you pushed a knob down). And this occupied my thoughts throughout the dismal defeat. My relief when the car was in the same place my Dad had parked it (I never told him) was enormous. The season ended in relegation.

4) Bristol City (H) – 2014-15. Lost 1-2.

Nigel Clough had managed to move United away from the relegation places and led us on an incredible FA Cup run where we got to the semi-finals – quite remarkable for a League One club. With new signings and an entire season of Clough at the helm, hopes were high that the Blades could finally get out of the third tier at the fourth attempt.

However, fans were greeted with a bizarre opening day line-up punctuated by a makeshift defence (Clough had fallen out with Neil Collins and also his new signing Andy Butler before the season started!). We began with a pairing of Jay McEveley and Harrison McGahey. We also had an unlikely combination in midfield with youngster Louis Reed paired with Chris Basham – making his first appearance for the club. 

Debutant Michael Higdon started up front and was bizarrely made captain. The scattergun selection saw United struggle. We went behind to one of the other pre-season favourites Bristol City. Higdon scored a leveller but City won it in the second half with a former nemesis of the past, Wade Elliott scoring the deciding goal. Clough enthused about his new signing, “I was really pleased with Michael Higdon's performance. You can see what he is going to give us.” Higson only made 8 more league starts and only scored one more league goal. This set the scene for a messy season where that ended in play-off defeat to Swindon.

3) Portsmouth (A) – 1999-00. Lost 0-2.

In Adrian Heath’s first game as manager, United took to the field wearing a kit that had the sponsor “Blades” upon it. Not being able to attract a decent manager or kit sponsorship should have been the sign of a season of struggle. The opening day was an absolute disaster. Key man Curtis Woodhouse got injured in the first half and new Belgian signing Axel Smeets was sent off. Paul Devlin hit the bar with a penalty and United were well beaten. Heath was gone before December and Warnock had to come in to ensure the Blades were not in a relegation fight. We finished 16th but it could have been a lot worse without the managerial change mid-season.

2) Wolves (H) – 2020-21. Lost 0-2.

This was not a surprise defeat at all, as Wolves were a strong side who had been competing with us for European places the season before. The season started with nobody in attendance in an empty Bramall Lane as Covid continued to affect the country. Aaron Ramsdale made his debut but the Blades team looked a far cry from the side that had just finished 9th. In this game, United began slowly and conceded after only 3 minutes. We let another in on 6 minutes and the game was done before it had even properly started. 

We never recovered from this horrific start in this game, or the season as a whole. Wolves won easily and after this United were stuck in a rut. Jack O’Connell got injured, the losses piled up and we did not win until after Xmas. A season to forget as the Chris Wilder era came to an end and for stages United threatened to break records for ineptitude. 

1) Gillingham (A) – 2015-16. Lost 0-4.

Season five at League One level and surely this was the time we would finally escape the torture? After all, we had hired promotion expert, Nigel Adkins. Pre-season, the new manager’s upbeat soundbites impressed many. We had re-signed Billy Sharp, and at the time of this game, retained star man Jamie Murphy. We even unveiled a luminous away kit. A large following of nearly 2,000 fans made their way down to Kent to sit on the temporary seating behind the goal. The sun was out as often the case for opening day. It was set up for us to lay down a marker. Then the game started. 

It was an absolute disaster. George Long played like a startled rabbit. The whole played like strangers, and Gillingham blew us away. Future Blade John Egan scored and Murphy never played for us again. We did not just lose, we got mullered. Afterwards, Adkins said: “The players, the staff and the club all know we have to do much better than that if we want to be winning games of football.”

Sadly, things did not improve and the season ended up being the poorest in many Unitedites lifetimes as we finished in the lowest position we had since the early 80s. Adkins’ quips and interviews began to irritate rather than motivate and it soon unravelled. Another manager jettisoned in League One, and it seemed like we would never get out of this bloody division – until Chris Wilder came home. 

5 Favourite Opening Days

5) Liverpool (H) – 1990-91. Lost 1-3 tied with Liverpool (H) – 2005-06. Drew 1-1