Every November I seem to find myself at Hillsbrough. Emma has family and friends that live over there and the whole family are Sheffield Wednesday fans. Quite why it is always a weekend in November I'm not sure. Her brother's birthday is at the end of November but he has been in the Navy and so is not always there. Her mum's birthday is the beginning of December so maybe it is that, but we never seem to make a big deal of it being her birthday and she doesn't often come to the football with us. Emma's dad stopped taking her along when she spent one match with her back to the game watching the crowd.
Last year it was Bristol City. It was a dire game. A 0-0 draw which had me scratching my head as to how the sheed-heads had managed to climb into the Championships top six at that point. They didn't stay there long and on that evidence it is easy to see why. Wednesday were no better that day. Twice I have seen them play Carlisle United in League One in November, one a dismal 1-0 defeat and the other a glorious 2-1 win in which Mikael Antonio's goal secured promotion to the Championship. I've seen Wednesday go three down in little more than half an hour to Bolton Wanderers, and I have seen them outplay and beat a Huddersfield Town team which is not much different from the one which beat Wolves 2-0 in the Premier League only a couple of days ago. It's been a bit of a mixed bag but it has almost always been November. The only Wednesday games I can remember going to that were not in November were a 1-0 win at Wigan one New Year weekend two or three years ago, a 4-2 League One playoff final win over Hartlepool United at Cardiff in 2005 and a turgid 1-0 Championship playoff final defeat to Hull City in 2016.
This year it is Derby County. Emma and I have a friend, Mark, who was at university with us at Barnsley and who now works as a sports writer in the local Derby press. He meets up with us before he has to head to the ground to start working on the game. We meet at the Old Crown Inn on Penistone Road, about a 10-minute push (walk) from Hillsbrough. It takes the staff fully 10 minutes to open the accessible door at the side of the pub even though it is midday when we arrive and the place has been open for nearly an hour. I think I am right in saying that it's a fire door too. But nobody can find the right key for it. In an emergency there's not much hope for anyone at the Old Crown Inn.
It's good to be getting here early. Usually we arrive a little after 1.00 and the place is already chock full by then. We tend to find ourselves squeezing on to the end of someone else's table or else everyone but me (obviously) has to remain standing which makes good coversation difficult. Have you tried having a conversation with someone in a busy pub when they are stood up and you are sat down? The difficulty of doing this is one of the principal reasons why wheelchair users feel socially excluded. The chats go on two feet above your head so you don't hear them properly, and any attempt you make to join in can often be in vain. It is still not quite 12.00 when we sit at our table with only one other group of about two or three people for compan in the lounge.
Roland, Emma's dad, remarks that this bit is often the best bit about getting together for a Wednesday game. He's joking but its hard to argue. This is the bit were hope still exists. Where a slip from Tom Lees hasn't yet ruined your day. And for all its door-opening incompetence I can't fault the Old Crown Inn for its beer. It serves Guinness, which is my tipple of choice ever since my trip to Dublin to see Joss Stone last October for my birthday. The hotel we are staying in, the Holdiay Inn Express, does not. It serves dreadful lager which I'm worried will not agree with my currently highly temperemental stomach. Today is Saturday and I spent half of Thursday night awake with it again. Happily it is not affected by Guinness. Guinness makes everything better.
Unfortunately Mark can't stay around long but he's still there when a group of hi-viz-jacketed people come in and begin taking photographs of the Wednesday pictures on the pub's walls. I learn later that they are from the Czech Republic but I have no clue what brings them to Sheffield for the visit of Frank Lampard's side. I can't imagine Adam Reach is popular in Prague but then the world is an ever-shriking place in the age of the internet so perhaps he is. One of the photographs on the wall is of particular interest to me because it depicts the different kits worn by Wednesday since their formation in 1867. I didn't know that back then they wore blue and white horizontal hoops more in the style of a Reading or a QPR than the vertical stripes we associate with them now. I'd bet good money that if Wednesday released a kit with that design for the start of the 2019-20 season there would be scores of people on their online forums and websites complaining about how tradition has been obliterated with the loss of vertical stripes, not realising the history behind the hoops. We have a similar problem at Saints. I'm as guilty as anyone of complaining if a new kit is released that doesn't feature a red vee but the truth is the red vee with which the club is now synonomous was only used from around the 1960s. Before that Saints traditional shirt design was white with a red band similar to what Hull KR sometimes wear.
Today we are in the Kop. The view is behind the goal, which I don't mind so much, but at ground level which I don't like. We are away to one side, not far from the corner flag. Pre-game I bump into a former team-mate of mine from my time at Steelers Wheelchair basketball club in Sheffield. He's a season ticket holder of many years so it is no surprise to see him here but today we are sitting in different stands and still manage to cross paths. This is either a startling coincidence or Hillsbrough could do with a few more options in the area of accessible toileting. The teams are just being announced when we settle in to our seats so I don't catch all of both line-ups. What I do notice is that Lees is playing and I'm immediately nervous.
Wednesday's state of health has been a subject of some conjecture under the current manager Jos Lukuhay. The Dutchman has been in charge since January after spells with Cologne, Paderborn, Borussia Monchengladbach, Augsburg, Hertha Berlin and Stuggart in Germany. It is fair to say he has not quite found the right formula in that time. At kick-off Wednesday are 17th in the table and showing more signs of becoming embroiled in a relegation battle than they are of threatening the playoff places. That can change in the notoriously competetive Championship but the early signs aren't good under Lukuhay.
To be fair he has been hampered by injuries to his squad with the likes of Fernando Forestieri, Kieran Lee, Gary Hooper and Barry Bannon all having had spells on the sidlelines during his reign but nobody can figure out why Kieren Westwood isn't in the side. Westwood was arguably the best goalkeeper in the Championship last year but has mysteriously vanished, his place taken by Cameron Dawson. The theory is that there is some financial implication involved in continuing to select Westwood, some clause in his contract that would be triggered by his reaching a certain number of appearances. Meanwhile Jordan Rhodes has scored five goals for top of the table Norwich City who he was allowed to join on loan in the summer. His place at the apex of Wednesday's attack is today taken by Lucas Joao, a talented player but one who defines the term 'flatters to deceive'. Stephen Fletcher, a goalscorer for Scotland during their international break win over Albania, is absent presumed injured. Andrew, Emma's brother, informs me that Fletcher recently had a hair transplant so here's hoping that everything is still going ok with the new barnet.
Forestieri is restored behind Joao after a similarly strange spell of absence from the reckoning, while at fullback Ash Baker is making only his ninth appearance at the expense of Liam Palmer. Ninety minutes later I'm not totally sold on the idea that Baker, A Welsh under-19 and under-21 international, is an upgrade on Palmer. Michael Hector partners Lees in the centre of the defence with Morgan Fox at left-back behind a midfield of Reach, Bannan and Joey Pelupessy. Morgan Fox is a great name. The name of someone who might be the central character in a television crime drama, or equally a children's cartoon sheep-bothering pest. It's a versatile moniker. I know little about Pelupessy but having seen him play a few times I can't tell you how much I prefer Lee as a footballer. Pelupessy does nothing for me but then I didn't rate Reach until this year when he suddenly stopped taking a touch like a baby rhino and instead began conducting his own goal of the season competition. I'm prepared to accept that there is room for improvement in Pelupessy just as there has been in Reach.
Lampard is of course still a darling of the media and so attention is far more focused on his Derby side than it might otherwise be. For a Liverpool fan like me there is a lot of Anfield-related interest in his side with loanee Harry Wilson joined in the County starting 11 by ex-reds Scott Carson in goal and Andre Wisdom at right-back. Mason Mount is on loan from Chelsea and is one of the most promising midifelders in the country who should be able to develop in that position under one of its greatest ever English exponents. Up front Jack Marriott started at Ipswich Town but has bounced around the lower leagues before arriving from Peterborough United ealier this year. He's managed four goals from 12 appearances before today and is the central focus of a front three also featuring Wilson and Florian Jozefzoon, a Dutch under-19 and under-21 international originally from French Guiana. He played for both Ajax and PSV Eindhoven before making his name in English football with Brentford last season.
As you would expect from a Lampard side Derby look to keep the ball on the floor more than most teams at this level and are quite handy at it. Yet they don't have much cutting edge in the opening exchanges. If anything Wednesday have the better of it and it looks like a surprise could be on the cards when they open the scoring after just 12 minutes. Reach is played in by Bannon and slots coolly past former Wednesday stopper Carson in the County goal. Derby were pounded 3-0 by Aston Villa in their last game before the international break and at this point it looks like their lofty league positon might not be a true reflection of their quality. They could be another Bristol City, destined to slip back into the pack before Lampard's departure is quietly announced in the summer and he goes back to more regular appearances alongside cousin Jamie on Super Sunday.
Or not. After half an hour a blocked shot falls to Wilson on the left hand side of the Wednesday penalty area. It bounces up past knee height but the Welshman manages to get over it and arrow a volley into the far corner of Dawson's net. It's a beautifully exectuted piece of technique from Wilson whose talent was widley known but who had until this point spent large parts of his afternoon arguing with the referee. Otherwise he had shuffled along on the fringes of the game leaving no trace of the star quality that has persuaded Jurgen Klopp that he might be a key part of Liverpool's future. Four minutes later Jozefzoon slides a ball through to Marriott who expertly guides the ball past Dawson into the far corner to give Derby the lead. Marriott hits the bar before half-time. Without ever dominating the game Derby could be out of sight by the break. For all their huff and puff Wednesday don't look like a team capable of coming back from a two-goal deficit.
Having said that they are the better side. After the interval it is all Wednesday. Only Tom Huddlestone's long-range strike, acrobatically turned over by Dawson, provides any threat for the visitors. Wednesday hardly camp out in the Derby penalty area but they have much the better of the play and probably deserve something from their afternoon's endeavour. Fox's header comes back off a post from no more than a couple of yards while Marco Matias blazes over, blisfully unaware that the assistant referee has flagged him offside. Yet it is Forestieri who has the clearest chance to send the Wednsday faithful home if not happy, then fairly contented. But he fluffs it.
In a similar position from where Marriott had put Derby in front Forestieri is faced with just Carson to beat. As it leaves his foot Emma and I, behind the goal remember, are convinced it is going in and almost begin to celebrate. Yet later when we discuss the chance with Andrew and Roland they say that from their view from behind Forestieri they could tell from the moment he hit the shot that it was off target. He had tried to swerve it away from Carson with the outside of his foot and that had taken the ball away from the far post also. A curler back inside with the inside of his foot might have been a better option.
It's not just his missed chance but his overall performance that has me wondering about Forestieri. His relationship with the Wednesday fans has been a fairly on-off one to date, with moves to other clubs including Leeds United touted on more than one occasion. Last time we saw Wednesday live he was brilliant in that 1-0 win at Huddersfield Town but today he is underwhelming. He has been out of the side for a while and may be a little rusty. Maybe he will come good. But there remains a nagging suspicion that Lukuhay would be well advised to cash in on Forestieri if there are still suitors out there. The former Watford man will turn 29 in January which is not exactly veteran territory, but nor is he the future five years from now.
By contrast another man approaching his 29th birthday is proving indispensable to Wednesday. Barry Bannan is the best player on either side today, spraying the ball cleverly and sensibly around the midfield while also scurrying around to win every tackle he can. If this ailing team has a heartbeat then he is it. He's assured, never flustered despite the predicament of his side. Some say players of his style are a luxury if you end up in a fight for survival but his calming presence could be exactly what is needed if things start to get a little tetchy.
The sticking point on the plan of offloading Forestieri and building the side around Bannan might be uncertainty around the manager. Would you authorise a manager whose position looks ever more shaky to preside over the sale of one of your main assets and then trust him to find a suitable replacement? Derby hang on for the win and do so fairly comfortably after Forestieri's miss, leaving Wednesday just three points off the drop zone ahead of Tuesday night's home clash with Bolton Wanderers. Lukuhay's future has to be under discussion in the Wednesday boardroom. Wanderers are one of the teams still below Wednesday in the table but defeat to Phil Parkinson's side would surely signal the start of a relegation battle, if it hasn't started already. Managers get less and less time to get things right in modern football and Lukuhay's exit after 10 months in the job would be far from unusual for a modern Championship club. Gone are the days when boards didn't worry about the prospect of relegation and instead trusted their man to get it right in the end. A time when stability was a concept relating to something more than just television money. It isn't that long since Wednesday have played in the third tier of English football and I'm sure there is very little appetite to sample it again any time soon.
The tram ride back to our hotel is raucous. The Derby fans are in fine voice after a win which lifts their side to sixth in the table, level on points with Sheffield United and West Bromwich Albion immediately above them. Victory at Stoke on Wednesday night will continue their bid for a playoff place and, who knows, automatic promotion to the Premier League. It takes a long, long time for the tram to progress through the busy city stops and we get back into the Guinness-free bar, to the dodgy lager and another lengthy post-mortem with other friends and family who have gathered for the evening but who missed out on the afternoon's entertainment. The discussion never really stops, constantly resurfacing even after other topics have been introduced. Nobody has any definitive solutions to the ongoing conundrum that is Sheffield Wednesday Football Club.
Until next November then. I wonder who will be the visitors then. At this point the odds of it being Newcastle United are about the same as it being Shrewsbury Town. Such are the unpredictable ups and downs of football's league pyramid. I wouldn't like to bet on what league Wednesday will be in by then. If I had to put my money on anything it would be that someone else other than Lukuhay will be charged with leading the team.
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