If you’re a fan of a South Yorkshire club in League One this season it’s probably fair to say it hasn’t been a great one so far; all the teams from that area in the third tier are hardly setting the world on fire, with the malaise even spreading to nearby Chesterfield.
The Derbyshire club are one of the latest in League One to part company with their manager, the former Doncaster Rovers boss Dean Saunders, leaving the club last week. He went following a run which saw 11 defeats in the last 15 league matches to leave last season’s play-off semi-finalists floundering in 16th place and clearly worried they would follow the same path as Saunders’ last club, Crawley Town – relegated to League Two under him at the end of last season – with that kind of form. The former Welsh International was the ninth man to move on from a League One manager’s seat this season with one of his successors at Doncaster being one of the first.
Paul Dickov was relieved of duties at the Keepmoat Stadium early on in the season, a run of just one win from the first six league matches enough for the Doncaster board after an underwhelming 13th place last season. Rovers ultimately replaced Dickov with former Peterborough United boss Darren Ferguson, Sir Alex’s son eventually taking over in mid-October after a spell under caretaker manager Rob Jones saw them slump to second from bottom. Ferguson has since guided them to the relative safety of 15th spot following a recent run of three wins in their last five league games.
One man who has, surprisingly, not lost his job is Barnsley boss Lee Johnson. Despite a run of just one win in twelve, which has seen nine of those games lost including an embarrassing F.A. Cup exit to National League side Altrincham, Johnson has somehow stayed in charge at Oakwell. Their latest match at least saw them pick up a point in the South Yorkshire derby at home to Sheffield United, and it is the Blades who are perhaps the biggest under-achievers in South Yorkshire at the moment.
The Bramall Lane club are by far the best supported of the teams in the area in League One, with them regularly getting crowds approaching or surpassing 20,000 – as pointed out by ex-Barcelona star Xavi recently – more or less matching their neighbours Wednesday who, of course, play in a division higher. Both sets of fans started the new season with high hopes that new managers would bring success and whilst Wednesday fans see their side sitting just outside the play-off spots, and still basking in the glory of their Capital One Cup defeat of Arsenal, despite going out in the next round, for United fans it has been a depressingly familiar tale.
The Blades brought in Nigel Adkins in the summer who, despite a poor spell in his previous job at Reading, still came with much kudos from his time at Southampton. That spell included a promotion from this division which added to the two he had gained with unfashionable Scunthorpe United from the same tier prior to his move to St Mary’s. He was seen as the ideal candidate for the role given the promotions on his C.V., three more than the previous incumbent at Bramall Lane, Nigel Clough. The former Nottingham Forest striker guided the club to 7th and 5th spots in his two seasons at the club as well as taking them to two major semi-finals, the F.A. Cup in 2014 and the League Cup last season. It was with more than a hint of bitterness that the recently re-appointed Burton Albion boss was recently quoted;
‘If that is failure, good luck to everybody else.’
The feeling around S2 was it was felt Clough was too cautious, with the club’s board indicating they didn’t feel he was up to the job of getting the club promoted. With |Adkins’ record at this level the feeling was he was the man to take them that step or two that Clough couldn’t. Despite the squad clearly coming up short last season, going out of the play-offs at the semi-final stage to Swindon Town, the former Wigan Athletic goalkeeper opted to stick with largely the same players for this season, with very few moving in or out of the club over the summer. As a result, it has come as little surprise to see nothing much has changed, in fact if anything they have gone backwards given they sat six points off the play-offs prior to a morale boosting win at home to Oldham Athletic in this weekend’s F.A. Cup second round, setting up a trip to Manchester United in the third round.
This is now Sheffield United’s fifth successive season at this level which no doubt grates on those supporters as well as the board. They are perceived as one of the ‘big-boys’ at this level and despite matching their cross-city rivals for support they are perhaps losing that air of invincibility given their inability to get out of the division. Home defeats to the newly promoted sides of Bury and Shrewsbury Town as well as one to a Colchester United team that spent much of last season – and this – struggling to stay out of the bottom four, would seem to back up this theory.
In recent years there have been a succession of big clubs that have found themselves in the third tier of English football; Leeds United, Norwich City, Southampton, Sheffield Wednesday and Wolverhampton Wanderers have all spent time in League One, or its equivalent, within the last eight years. Other than Leeds, who took three years to get back up, all have gone back up after two seasons at most, with Norwich and Southampton using that momentum to get themselves back in the Premier League too.
The Blades clearly have the fan base of those clubs but having a support of that size is no guarantee of success, in fact it may well hinder them. Coming to a big ground, playing in front of a much bigger crowd than they’re used to can inspire some players rather than intimidate. Rival teams know that the big crowd can soon turn on the home team if you are able to frustrate and nullify the home players, some of whom might not have the same quality and strength of character to deal with such situations.
It is a testing time for Adkins, and the board, with rumours circulating that recently sacked Blackburn Rovers boss Gary Bowyer is being lined up to replace the failing former physio. If the Bramall Lane club are to ever climb back up out of this division, patience is needed, they need to give Adkins the time to mould the team to his style, his ways – something that can’t always be done in less than half a season. A period of stability is needed, after too many changes in the dug-out in recent years, even if that does mean another year in the third tier.
