And you may ask yourself: how do I work this?
And you may ask yourself: what happened to that three-man midfield?
And you may tell yourself: this is not my beautiful club.
And you may tell yourself: this is not my beautiful league.
And you may find yourself: on 16 points.
And you may find yourself: getting triggered by assistant referees eating sandwiches.
Same as it ever was. Yes, it’s time for one of English football’s familiar springtime rituals: arguing whether [club bottom of the Premier League] is the “worst Premier League team of all time”. This season the torchlight has fallen on poor, brittle Sheffield United, who could be relegated as early as this weekend if results go against them. And if we have learned anything over the last eight months, it is that “results going against them” has been the one reliable defining note to United’s season, a rock to cling to in uncertain times.
Saturday’s 4-1 home defeat by Burnley felt like a watershed in this regard: not so much a downing of tools as a realisation that there are no tools, that the very existence of tools may have been a trick of the memory. Remarkably it was the first time Sheffield United had conceded four goals in a game all season; if, that is, you were prepared to disregard the 8-0, the 6-0 and the four 5-0s. The next goal they let in will bring them level with the infamous Derby County side of 2007-08, a team still regarded as the Rosetta Stone of Premier League awfulness, the foundational text by which all future pretenders are judged.
Even with the worst will in the world, Sheffield United are nowhere near as bad as that. Indeed for all their defensive infelicities, a curious preference for letting corners bounce first before clearing them – you know, just in case – they are actually a pretty capable side on the ball: full of craft and invention, quick flurries and late goals. Transpose this team into, say, the 1993-94 Carling Premiership and they would be greeted like some superior alien life form: relentlessly fit, technically on a different plane, probably winning the league by eight points. Ben Brereton Díaz would be a Golden Boot contender. Gustavo Hamer would be snapped up by a Serie A giant within months. Ivo Grbic, to be fair, might still struggle.
Not that this is really much consolation to fans of the 2023-24 iteration, still packing out Bramall Lane every week, steeling themselves for another afternoon of impotent rage. Doomed Premier League clubs seem to possess their own unique brew of misery, quite distinct from other forms of footballing bitterness: the condescension and the memes, the inevitability of that first goal, the faint souring of a once-fond dream.
Because this was supposed to be the promised land, right? From the foothills of the Championship, the Premier League looms like a kind of sporting Solaris: a tantalising glow in the sky made of weird textures and substances you long to touch. Riches beyond measure. The graveyard slot on Match of the Day. The world’s greatest agents beating a path to your sporting director. Mohamed Salah warming up on your turf, disrobing in your dressing room, wincing at your cold showers.
Of course when reality hits, it hits a little different to the brochures. Let’s take Nottingham Forest. How’s the promised land working out for them right now? Of all the recent promoted clubs, it is Forest who lived the Premier League dream most vicariously: loudly blazoning their ambitions, signing dozens of fun players, remaking themselves entirely. None of which, it turns out, seems to have made them remotely happy. While their fans fume at the latest tranche of ticket price rises, and Nuno Espírito Santo fumes at referees, official club statements fume at mysterious conspiracies, unspoken corruptions, a deep state that somehow includes Luton Town.
But then in the modern Premier League, it is not just the finances that are unevenly divided, but the happiness. Of course the Championship can also be soul-destroying in its own way. But it is at least more of a blank slate, where big teams can go down and small teams can still prosper. I know a few Ipswich fans and quite a lot of my time right now is being spent trying to convince them that this – right here – is the good bit. With a team they adore and a league they are tearing apart and a coach who is theirs and theirs alone.
Not the grim struggle that comes after: desperately begging big clubs for loan players, the sheer cliff face to 35 points, hours spent waiting for VAR decisions, 21% possession against Manchester City, elite tactical fouling. Getting bossed 2-0 at home and feeling weirdly grateful. Chris Sutton suddenly deciding to have an opinion about you. Getting rinsed by agents. Getting beaten by literal nation states. For the teams at the bottom of the food chain, the Premier League has come to resemble an abusive relationship.
In hindsight it is increasingly clear that the six Super League clubs should probably have been allowed to go: allowed to join their soiled, half-baked breakaway with its fantasy economics, leaving the rest of the pyramid in peace. The new regulator has the power to rebuild the finances of Championship football, to dissuade impatient owners from building entire business models out of debt and pipe dreams. In the meantime, perhaps fans need to stop conceiving of the Premier League as a form of salvation. For clubs like Sheffield United, grumbling and cursing, relegation need not feel like a trap door. Perhaps, in a certain light, it can even feel like an escape hatch to freedom.
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