Socialstorm: It's tough being Sheffield Wednesday right now

The news that Sheffield Wednesday chairman Milan Mandaric was close to selling the club to one of two £25m-bidding parties barely roused the national press.

However, as you can imagine, a potential takeover brought a much more stirring response from the Owls' own fans... very stirring indeed, if this forum post is anything to go by:

"With a possible takeover imminent SAY NO TO CHANGE we are Sheffield Wednesday our stadium is Hillsborough and we play in blue and white we have a great history changing anything would be heartbreaking our great grandparents would be turning in their graves I am however up for bringing us into the 22nd century but we are forever owls and won't accept change."

- Ryan Rye

Alas, Ryan's call to arms was met with nothing but cynicism...

"1 takeover resulted in a club changing it's colours

Chill out."

- EcclesallOwl

Oh dear. It's hardly a surprise that Wednesday fans are in a foul mood with their club sitting second-bottom of the Championship, with no wins in 11 league games so far.

The bad news doesn't stop there though, as Owls midfielder Jose Semedo received a straight-red card in the weekend's fixture with Bolton. Wednesday appealed, but guess what...

“@swfc: SWFC lose appeal on Jose Semedo, who will now serve a three-match ban #swfc” load of balls
— Ryan Trollope (@SWFC_Ryan) October 22, 2013

From one appeal to another. Wednesday striker Gary Madine was sentenced to 18 months in prison at the start of October for causing grievous bodily harm in a night club punch-up...

Sympathy appears to be in short supply:

#WhenWednesdayLastWon Gary Madine was a free man.
— emmmaaaaaa (@emz_swfc) October 21, 2013

What wit.

Phone battery has gone down quicker than Gary Madine
— Arron Smith (@ArronCFC_) October 21, 2013

Still, with all this going on, it would be easy to get bitter...

@Walkerpw If you get the same length of response to questions as the club's Gary Madine statement, you won't be there long.
— Charles Hoyland (@baggleyowl) October 17, 2013

... but most Wednesday fans appear to be just getting on with things. Let's not mince words - the Premier League is now a foggy, foggy memory indeed.

I'm sure a really positive takeover will go through and the Owls will all live happily ever after.

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Photo Credit: Daniel Bagshaw

"This is their worst league start for 65 million years..."

We have a winner!  The Most Tedious Period in the Football Calendar award can finally, unquestionably be given to this September-October quagmire.

We've got mass media outlets composing league tables - accompanied by headlines such as 'Cardiff go top with win' - after only two games.  You have the meaningless and sparsely-attended early group-stage matches in both (now-indistinguishable) European cups.  There's also not just one but two international weekends to grind through, stymying any attempts by clubs to build early-season momentum.

But the straw that has broken this old goat's back, that makes him want to trample broadcasters far and wide, is that oh-so-familiar line: "This is X's best/worst start for Y years!"

This phrase plagues September and October.  It must be stopped.  We must rally, get a petition going, bombard the BBC with complaints - make them apologise.  Whatever it takes to get the media to actually do some work and fish up some real statistics.

Who defines the word 'start'?  It's a lovely, fluid concept that stretches from about game number 3 out to what feels like Christmas and the halfway mark, and allows the media to frame any particular three-game run as reflective of that team's entire season.

 For example, in the 2010/11 season, Stoke City had 12 points from 9 games.   It was very ominous; "Stoke's worst-ever start [out of three attempts] to a Premier League season."

Stoke City then won three on the bounce and, after 12 games, had 21 points.  Without a hint of irony or a shred of shame the BBC's preview of the next fixture read: "Stoke have enjoyed their best-ever start to a Premier League season."   Some bloody nerve eh!

We need a government-imposed rule on the precise length of a 'start' to a season - say, 8 games.  Then you've got a real statistic on your hands and, what's more, we can all stop talking about it nice and early in the season.

I know, I know, it may seem like a triviality; I should go back to pontificating about the dying art of tackling or the worldwide refereeing conspiracy to favour Man United.  Well, I will - but this really needed highlighting.

If these media companies would have you and I believe that statistics dictate all within football, they could at least have the decency to use proper statistics.  We shouldn't just be swallowing whatever groundless garbage they conjure up to suit the occasion.

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Photo credit: stringberd

Life after the Prem: Danny Higginbotham

It must be hard for footballers to believe sometimes.  But yes, there can be more to post-30s life than sinking, defeated, into a plush Sky sofa, muttering agreement with whatever Jamie Redknapp just said - or trying to get a word in edgeways on BBC's 606 programme, placating a deluded Toon fan while being shouted over by Robbie Savage.

The increasing influx of experienced foreign coaches in the Premier League has only further diminished the job prospects of any aspirational managers, while anybody who isn't a cockney or hasn't played for West Ham ('footballing academy', my arse) is up against the odds if they fancy trying to squeeze into the crowded Sky Sports studios.  Whether they might be better trying next door at BT Sport - whose cavernous new facility houses a four-man punditry-panel colossus - is by the by.

Because Danny Higginbotham is illuminating a slightly different route.  Since incurring a serious knee injury while at Stoke in 2011, the 34-year-old former Man United trainee has found fitness - and first-team football - hard to come by.  Not deterred, Higginbotham began dabbling in punditry with several broadcasters, distinguishing himself increasingly well to the point where he was a big feature in the BBC's coverage of this month's transfer deadline day.  He's even started writing a column for Stoke-on-Trent's Sentinel newspaper (oo-er).

All fairly standard so far, you might think.  But Higginbotham isn't embracing the comfortable life just yet, and unlike many of his peers has demonstrated that he is not too proud to drop down the divisions to wherever he can find first-team football and continue his playing career.  Through a battle for fitness he has meandered his way down to the Blue Square Premier (the Conference, if you're one of us old gits), where he now plays with Chester FC.

He is one of several players cutting this admirable path.  Rory Delap, 37, moved to Burton Albion this summer; James Beattie, 35, first played for and - as of the end of last season - now manages Accrington Stantley; Dele Adebola, 38, now plies his trade for Rushall Olympic in the Northern Premier League Premier Division; Barry Hayles, 41, is turning out for Southern Premier Division side Arlesey Town this season. City the season before last; Frank Sinclair, 41, is the player-manager at Conference North outfit Colwyn Bay.

But Higginbotham isn't just content with "getting my love of football back" at Chester - in the past few days he has declared himself available for selection for the national team of Gibraltar, who are the newest full-members of UEFA following a successful application in May of this year.

As Higginbotham explained to BBC Radio 5 Live: "The opportunity might be there to play against some very big European countries - what an experience that would be.  It was something I couldn't turn down."

However, there are serious issues beneath this feel-good factor that persist unresolved.  The restricted educational opportunities of people who had to prioritise their sport from such an early age represent an obstacle which the game has only begun to get a handle on in the past decade.  Not every player will enter their 30s able to reel off a newspaper column or articulate on live television the finer points of Chelsea's new formation.

This leads into the broader and undeniable problem of racial stratification - both within the game and in the society that feeds the game each new generation of players.  The number of black managers currently among England's 92 league clubs (three - can you name them?) is greatly disproportionate to the number of black players at the same level.  Thus the positive is tarnished somewhat - that such luminaries as Frank Sinclair are giving back to the grassroots game not because they want to but because it is the best they can achieve in the current environment.

Higginbotham's is a satisfying story, but its exceptional nature serves only to highlight the fundamental problems that football continues to ignore.


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Photo credit: Ronnie Macdonald; Ingy the Wingy