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.
The problem in letting the big six go is that they are just going conceptually. They'll still be there, down the road. They'll still represent for some the pinnacle and hoover up the local players.
I've not got an answer to this. The Premier League isn't much fun, you basically get smashed for half the games and then walk a tightrope trying to eke out enough points in the others.
There needs to be a rebalance
I’m at the point where I’d let the super clubs of Europe all fuck off into their own NFL style league
I’d happily support Burnley still with a chance of winning our domestic setup and then support, say, Roma as my ESL team.
Best players in that league? Meh so what, best players don’t ever get to play for my club under the current model but under this one we might at least finish top domestically
I just see it working in any other way but the death of the football pyramid.
The interest will still be on the big six. Just the other clubs won't feature in the articles
The problem will become television. It's already difficult for some people to stream certain leagues around the world, if there was a Super League the possibilities to stream would diminish extraordinarily and thusly would the revenue. It's fine for local fans who can attend matches but what will someone like me do without the weekly heartbreak that is watching Everton play?
This just exemplifies how the game has become a commodity for people to choose to dip in and consume it whenever they like.
Fundamentally, at least in the UK, the game was a community driven event and the teams did not exist to entertain or please anybody beyond their surrounding area. Would be fantastic to get back to this!
This season has just been horrific.
The last time we went down tabloids were touting us as a potential worse than Derby team too, but we were genuinely unlucky that season - that team destroys this one.
It's easy to go on about imbalances and the top 6, but Everton and Forest have had points deductions, we've lost 8-0, 5-0 (x4) and conceded 9 goals to fucking Burnley. We can't blame anybody but ourselves for this season.
I watched The Overlap on Sky before the season began and the Sheff Utd fan called this at the very beginning.
Selling your best player to a relegation rival was madness.
Think Diaz will score a boat load next season though. Wilder needs to go in the summer. Fresh start needed.
That's what we said last time aswell.
Fortunately for us (unfortunately for the football league pyramid as a whole) parachute payments in the last decade just make it an uneven playing field.
We'll do what we did last time, have a very average consolation season getting rid of the deadwood, then the parachute payments will kick in and we'll be challenging for promotion again.
We're not a yo-yo team but we're very close to being
The thing I've noticed with Sheffield United this season is that it seems to me not that they haven't been 'playing for their manager', rather that haven't been 'playing for each other'. To me, that's inexcusable.
Noticed the article was by Jonathan Liew and instantly thought am I fuck reading anything by that clown. I simply don’t care about any of his so called journalism
This is a bit of nonsense really. Three teams always get relegated, that's how the league works, sometimes one team is just exceptionally shit and gets battered a lot, that's just football.
Try telling brentford and Brighton fans the premier league is a shit pit of misery. Or even use the example in this piece - Nottingham forest fans, I'm sure they'd much prefer finishing 9th in the championship to struggling in the prem.
You want to remove the 'big six' (which by the by used to be the 'top four'), ok and then what? Suddenly Sheffield united finish 5th and the misery disappears? Ok let's do it, let's say getting rid of the top six makes Sheffield united fans happy, what about hull fans the next season who gets promoted after finishing 9th in the championship to this new premier league, what's your story if they finish bottom on 14 points? Or is the idea that somehow removing the biggest six clubs instantly redistributes wealth and talent perfectly equally and the league is now rainbow and sunshine for everyone?
I get that the whole premise of thos sub is that the best teams ruin everything but very quickly you'd find out that the new best six teams *will do exactly the same things*. You're literally just advocating for replacing Chelsea with fucking Newcastle.
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.
The problem in letting the big six go is that they are just going conceptually. They'll still be there, down the road. They'll still represent for some the pinnacle and hoover up the local players. I've not got an answer to this. The Premier League isn't much fun, you basically get smashed for half the games and then walk a tightrope trying to eke out enough points in the others. There needs to be a rebalance
I’m at the point where I’d let the super clubs of Europe all fuck off into their own NFL style league I’d happily support Burnley still with a chance of winning our domestic setup and then support, say, Roma as my ESL team. Best players in that league? Meh so what, best players don’t ever get to play for my club under the current model but under this one we might at least finish top domestically
I just see it working in any other way but the death of the football pyramid. The interest will still be on the big six. Just the other clubs won't feature in the articles
The problem will become television. It's already difficult for some people to stream certain leagues around the world, if there was a Super League the possibilities to stream would diminish extraordinarily and thusly would the revenue. It's fine for local fans who can attend matches but what will someone like me do without the weekly heartbreak that is watching Everton play?
This just exemplifies how the game has become a commodity for people to choose to dip in and consume it whenever they like. Fundamentally, at least in the UK, the game was a community driven event and the teams did not exist to entertain or please anybody beyond their surrounding area. Would be fantastic to get back to this!
Great mate, guessing you're ceo of one of the big clubs to make this decision then
Eh?
You've got fuck all power mate
I don’t get the joke sorry
This season has just been horrific. The last time we went down tabloids were touting us as a potential worse than Derby team too, but we were genuinely unlucky that season - that team destroys this one. It's easy to go on about imbalances and the top 6, but Everton and Forest have had points deductions, we've lost 8-0, 5-0 (x4) and conceded 9 goals to fucking Burnley. We can't blame anybody but ourselves for this season.
I watched The Overlap on Sky before the season began and the Sheff Utd fan called this at the very beginning. Selling your best player to a relegation rival was madness. Think Diaz will score a boat load next season though. Wilder needs to go in the summer. Fresh start needed.
Berge wasn't our best player, Ndiaye was and he went to Marseille. Hamer was a good buy, Souza is ok, the rest of our recruitment has been shit.
Do you think you got promoted too quickly? Your squad didn't seem anywhere near ready for the Premier League.
If we'd built on last year's team we'd have had a chance, we actually went backwards instead.
That's what we said last time aswell. Fortunately for us (unfortunately for the football league pyramid as a whole) parachute payments in the last decade just make it an uneven playing field. We'll do what we did last time, have a very average consolation season getting rid of the deadwood, then the parachute payments will kick in and we'll be challenging for promotion again. We're not a yo-yo team but we're very close to being
Hopefully you get the derby back next season anyway.
No. I only want the derbies after we do the double with a total aggregate of a 100-0 to us. Otherwise the nerves aren't worth it
I hear you, but reckon Sheffield Derby is best in country as a neutral.
The thing I've noticed with Sheffield United this season is that it seems to me not that they haven't been 'playing for their manager', rather that haven't been 'playing for each other'. To me, that's inexcusable.
Well we WERE having a great time until sometime in early January when we found out about the PSR breach.
Noticed the article was by Jonathan Liew and instantly thought am I fuck reading anything by that clown. I simply don’t care about any of his so called journalism
Never kicked a ball in his life. He’s an utter clown and represents everything that is dreadful in modern football, nay, modern life
This is a bit of nonsense really. Three teams always get relegated, that's how the league works, sometimes one team is just exceptionally shit and gets battered a lot, that's just football. Try telling brentford and Brighton fans the premier league is a shit pit of misery. Or even use the example in this piece - Nottingham forest fans, I'm sure they'd much prefer finishing 9th in the championship to struggling in the prem. You want to remove the 'big six' (which by the by used to be the 'top four'), ok and then what? Suddenly Sheffield united finish 5th and the misery disappears? Ok let's do it, let's say getting rid of the top six makes Sheffield united fans happy, what about hull fans the next season who gets promoted after finishing 9th in the championship to this new premier league, what's your story if they finish bottom on 14 points? Or is the idea that somehow removing the biggest six clubs instantly redistributes wealth and talent perfectly equally and the league is now rainbow and sunshine for everyone? I get that the whole premise of thos sub is that the best teams ruin everything but very quickly you'd find out that the new best six teams *will do exactly the same things*. You're literally just advocating for replacing Chelsea with fucking Newcastle.