The Downside of May 05th

Right now it feels that Saturday could not have been better if I had won the lottery (which I actually played as I felt that lucky). The feeling of being promoted at a full to the brim Hillsborough was indescribable but that is it,no more league games until August. I know August isn't that far away but come on, I suddenly have this huge gaping whole in my life. No more Saturday morning excitement, no more praise or grumble (that could be a good thing...),no more travelling to Sheffield and getting nervous and excited as we approach Hillsborough. Don't get me wrong I didn't want to extend our season with the playoffs,I will enjoy watching them but as much as I might want to I'll never be able to cheer on any other team.  Yes,I'll try and see the world and reclaim my Saturdays, I will be reminded by friends and family members who do not understand football about all the times I refused to do things or go places because "Wednesday are playing". I will remind myself of all the miserable Saturday and Tuesday evenings after we had lost and how much I cursed the affliction of being a Owl. You see the thing is,we love it,we love the inability to plan things on Saturday,we love the nerves,I even think we love moaning when we f*ck up. Us football fans are a bit like kids when the summer holidays come around,we're so excited at all this free time and all the plans we have, this lasts for all of about 3 weeks then reality hits us. The reality that the summer is long and we miss our friends (the players) and even miss the stuff we complained about. Then come August we cant wait to get back to Hillsborough ,then it gets cold,wet and we lose and we long for the happy days of close season.

I love the pre season build up, the names flying around and the signing of new and exciting players. However last years long,stretched preseason seemed to take it out of me. The constant rumours flying around with so little being finalised until basically the start of pre season.  Should Manderic or Jones be reading this (how bloody likely!) can I beg you to space out the signings so we have little nuggets of Swfc news to get our teeth into every week or so.


I'm off for a little bank holiday DIY, putting up a signed 2011/2012 Wednesday shirt,don't ask how I managed to get it,just say I owe a dog a HUGE thank you!

Twitter

As those who know we may already know I love twitter and have an account @gweimo. However since I tweet about loads of topics there I thought it made sense to start one just for football/ Swfc. So from now on you can also find me at @blueanwhitegirl.

Someone Pinch Me!

WE ARE GOING UP,WE ARE GOING UP!

Sorry,had to get out my system first,been chanting that almost continuously since the final whistle (not before,I'm superstitious and those singing it before were giving me a heart attack with nerves over it all going wrong-wawaw?). I apologise for not updating since the derby,life has been a tad difficult with family tragedy.

I wrote a blog about Dave Jones joining but it seems I forgot to press "publish",what a numpty I am at times. Anyway today is not for that, today is for savouring us Wednesday fans actually getting a bit of luck. I know,it's rare,so rare I almost forgot what it feels like for football to go our way but it has and we are now in the Championship and going in the right direction,what a feeling it is. To overcome the other side of the city (I hate the term pigs as I quite like pigs and don't like the blunts) being 5 points ahead of us with 2 games in hand is frankly,amazing. Dave Jones has worked miracles, do I think Megson would have done the same, how can I know? I do believe the derby win would have pushed him and the team on,I believe the signing of Michael Antonio was vital to our promotion and to our form. Since Ben Marshall had left we were seriously missing a second wide player and Prutton wasn't cutting the mustard. However all that is hypothetical,all we know is that Dave Jones came in (much to the concern of many-including myself) and has been superb.

I was at Hillsborough,after about 3 hours sleep (how can you sleep when you're so nervous),having planned to go to the final game (as always) since the fixtures came out we had the perfect seats, South Stand(north was full and being so full the south was surprisingly awake!) on the centre line 10 rows back, could not be better. We were in the seats by 2:25 as I was so nervous we would be late but to be honest being in the seats and ready to go made me feel even more nervous. I tried everything,reading the programme (which was brilliant-well done to those who made it!),listening to my mp3 player,counting the people in the north stand,watching the players warm up and just when I thought that the waiting would never end the clock turned 2:55 and we were all up and running.

We played well,no really! We were calm,in control,trying so hard but managing to remember how to play, I dont know what went right. Whatever it was can we please do it more often! No need to come back from behind or desperate defending as our goal is tested time and time again. I dont think I've felt as comfortable and relaxed at a game for a long,long time.

The only thing I was initially worried about was that we wouldn't score,we have recently been known to have lots of chances but not put many away and it seemed it would be the same yesterday. That was until the 26th minute when Nile Ranger set up Michael Antonio,beautiful! Antonio then looked to have re payed Ranger when a rebound off him allowed Ranger to tap in a goal that the linesman decided was offside (someone get him glasses) shortly before half time. Ranger did get his official goal on the 56th minute after being set up by Chris Lines. We bossed the game from start to end,Wycombe had no chance,they maybe had 5 minutes of any possession but even that was easily dealt with. Bywater made one save that I can remember and that he likely bothered to dive as he was feeling a bit cold.

If the team were good (and they were) the crowd was flipping amazing,37500 SWFC fans absolutely packing the beautiful Hillsborough,that is how she is meant to look. Relegated Wycombe brought just under 500 very loyal ( big respect to them and good luck) fans, around them were the only spare seats. 

Danny Batth Being Worshipped

If you want a laugh and who doesn't,you have to watch the smaller aka shit Sheffield team being mocked by the mighty Exeter http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRqzHip-nQc&feature=player_embedded . Nicked some pics from all over the place,took some myself but to be honest they're not as good as some on owlstalk and the like.

Finally,you have to watch this now, Hi Ho Sheffield Wednesday as seen by the Wycombe Wanderers fans,I've seen it about 10 times today and it never,ever gets old and I cant see that it ever will.

WOW! Notice the spare seats-that's the Wycombe fans

This swells my heart with utter pride

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Highs and Lows- Winning the Steel City Derby and Losing OUR Manager

Apologise for not writing about the most amazing day I have experienced as a Wednesday fan. Words seem to abandon me when describing exactly how it felt to be at Hillsborough with 32000 Wednesdayites when we beat the blunts. I have a full post ready to go and was finishing it last night when I received a text that made me delete it. It was an innocent,questioning one from a friend asking why Swfc had sacked Megson.Initially I thought it was a cruel joke but I knew that wasn't something she would do. Then I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. Obviously I rushed to owlstalk (which was in total meltdown) and put on the radio (through blades player as it was blocked online as they were playing-I feel dirty!). What can I say that hasn't been said by so many Wednesday fans? Obviously Megson and Milan fell out and I truly believe that Milan wanted us to lose on Sunday so he could sack Megson easily. I don't think Milan had any idea how much Wednesday fans absolutely adore Megson,he's OUR manager,he's one of US. I believed he would be with us for many,many years to come. The thought of someone else standing in his box on the sideline makes me want to cry. I know this awful feeling of anger,betrayl and a member of your family being sacked will go and of course I will always follow Wednesday. This just makes it hard right now.

That's Our Megson

Goal Celebration

Winning-This Says It All

On Sunday we were sat in the south stand (only decent tickets) and being close to Megson we could hear him (well pretty much the whole ground can,but we could really hear him) and see him mess around with the blunt fans.I have never felt so proud as when I saw him lift up his shirt,kiss the badge and point to his blue under top. We saw the tail end of his goal celebrations (after we stopped jumping all over the nearest people and singing) and saw him go and shake the hand of every blunt player before celebrating with all our players,now that is good sportsmanship. We saw how he didn't want to leave the pitch,how no Wednesday fan wanted to leave the stadium (I was ready to stay for days :) ). Now I think back over the most perfect of days,the most amazing feelings towards our team and our manager I cant understand and cant help feeling I'll have to wait a long to to feel like that again. If (now this seems an even bigger IF) we get promoted,it will be Megson's promotion not the new managers. Yes we will take to whoever it is (once we finish grieving) and they will become one of us if they do well but they wont REALLY be one of us. You see,Wednesday chooses you. You cant choose it,you can be picked by Milan to be a true Owl, you either have it (Megson)  or you don't (Irvine).
  I believe that one day Megson will be our manager again,after Milan sells us, when the time is right. He is so adored by the fans,he adores the club and I have never seen any manager show such passion. Until then someone has to keep his seat warm,so who will it be. I believe whoever it is already has the job,I believe this was done before the derby and this is disgraceful but we will have to leave Megson to sort that out. Who is it then? It seems the top contenders are Dave Jones,Mick McCarthy,Paul Ince or Lee Clark. I would automatically scrap Ince and Clark as they were sacked by teams below us in our division and because I took a dislike to Clark when I saw him at Hillsborough, As for Jones and McCarthy, I think the only one out of those two that would be a slight step forward would be McCarthy. Yes he's a dingle but we have to look past that and see he has a good record,he's feisty (please no boring managers- Jones!) and is available. He would also fit in with our playing style and players we have available, no point hiring a manager who only plays attractive football when we have a large,strong team. I do wonder of McCarthy will come down two leagues for us. I have to admit I've followed McCarthy at Wolves for a while and have a fondness for him,not really sure why, I guess I admired him keeping Wolves up last season and saw passion in him when we had a boring awful manager called Irvine.

 Goodbye for now Megson,we hope to see you back here soon. As for the new manager,he'll be welcomed and we will support him,we just need to get over the shock.

The Night Before

So here we are, 14 hours until the Steel City Derby kicks off at Hillsborough. I've managed to stay relatively calm and relaxed,until about 10 mins ago, as family are visiting so I've been unable to listen to football heaven or peruse the Internet. As I repainted my nails blue and white and got rid of the red on my toe nails (superstitious or what!) I felt the start of that feeling that every football fan know,pre game jitters. A combination of excitment,nerves,anticipation,the chance of something amazing happening and the chance for it all to go horribly wrong. 
 There is nothing more I can say that hasn't been said 100000x. All I can do is hope that at 3pm tomorrow afternoon as I'm in the car driving back from Hillsborough I am happy,that I've seen a brilliant performance by us and that we've won. I hope I'll be hoarse from cheering and singing and exhausted from all the brilliant play I've seen. I know that's a lot to ask for but having put up with some shit performances this year I think it's time to see something amazing, optimistic,yes but who knows!

I shall write tomorrow pm.

Is Football Gossip Destructive?

I certainly think football gossip has to have some effect,be it on the players who are talked about and the managers whose futures are constantly discussed and analysed. Their every move is talked about both in the press and on fan boards (owlstalk mainly for Swfc). Now don't get me wrong I am certainly not against freedom of speech and certainly not against fans having somewhere to discuss their beloved team,however we must all remember that anyone can post on these boards no matter what their agenda. During the time of Lee Strafford, Swfc's ex chairman, the club but mainly him reached out to fans on message boards. I would argue that this accessibility did neither him or the club any good, He became increasingly paranoid, often accusing people of being FUDS (basically causing fear,unrest and disorder) there to cause problems. I'm sure there are people on there who were intending to do exactly that, but he seemed to think every 3rd person was there to cause issues and I honestly think he was wrong.

 Unless anonymity is taken away you will never stop people joining message boards to plant rumours and hope to affect their rival team. This has been very clear in the last 3 days with owlstalk being inundated with new members who claim to be ITK (in the know) about Gary Megson about to be sacked. Yesterday the rumours spread to some of the press with talksport and a few other sports journalists commenting after being emailed about it. This is hardly surprising as Swfc have lost 3 league games and a very,very big game against the blunts on Sunday. We all know that it makes sense for blunt fans to try and cause issues in the Wednesday camp as this will help them even more. Owlstalk has actually reacted quite well (for owlstalk and these people can OVERREACT beyond belief :) ) and seems to be acting fairly level headily. I assumed this was all over yesterday but I open owlstalk today to find that The Sun newspaper has printed an article about Gary Megson titled "Doomed Megson heading for Hills" which can be found here. Basically they have reprinted all the usual rumours (Megson and Mandric dont get on, Megson is going to be sacked etc,Paul Ince is lined up for the job) and say they have it from an inside source. What we have to remember is 1) you can write anything in the name of an anonymous insider to cover you backside 2) I could call The Sun or any tabloid and say I work at whatever club and I know for example that Danny Wilson is an agent for the owls and will let them win on Sunday. This obviously is not true but if I say I want to remain annoymous then that's what will happen and nothing can be traced back to me.

Is this unique to football? Of course not, it is amplified because football is the national game and there are so many millions of fans. You just need to look at trending twitter topics for the last year,how many RIP celebrityname(who is alive) have we seen? This is just an extreme (and very macabre) form of what happens on football forums all over the world, no matter if you support Swfc,Man City, Real Madrid or Barca. 

Lets say for a split second that The Sun really have a credible insider (sounds like an oxymoron right!) and that Manderic really is upset with the recent form and him and Megson don't get on. Firstly, I wouldn't be surprised if they don't get on and I actually don't think it would matter for a split second provided they can work together. Megson isnt known for being the easiest man in the world and neither is Manderic but so what? Secondly, you would hardly be surprised to hear that Manderic is annoyed at loosing 3 league games on the trot, if he was I would be worried. Yes,Sunday is a very big game,there is no beating around the bush or ignoring this. Should we lose on Sunday there will be mounting pressure on Manderic as promotion will start looking much less likely,even through the playoffs. Should we lose badly (please no!) then I wouldn't be surprised if he was sacked pretty much straight away. Is this all Megsons fault? I would argue not. Since January we have had a weaker team than from August to January. We lost Ben Marshall and to be honest we really haven't replaced him,certainly not with someone who can do the same job as him. We also lost James OConnor and no matter what you think about him he had a fantastic win ratio and he always tried damn hard for Swfc. I've seen him play badly but I've never seen him not try.  I think it is appalling ( I know I have likely written about this already but I still irks me) that when Megson said he wanted JOC to stay and JOC said he wanted to stay that Paul Aldridge decided not to offer him a new contract.  I realise we probably couldn't do anything to keep Ben Marshall but to bring Mike Jones and John Bostock in as replacements has been a huge failure. I cant help but think that perhaps we should be looking at Milan and asking him why he hasn't fully backed his manager.

Should Megson go and I sincerely hope he doesn't as I respect him and believe he can get us promoted no matter how annoyed I've been recently. Can we please have Mick McCarthy as he is talented and not boring or a stroppy little sod like a certain ex-Huddersfield manager. Alternatively you could really shock people and hire me, be the first male British league club to hire a female as a football manager, you should see my record on football manager and you think Megson has a loud voice wait until you here mine (JJ beware!).

The First of the Two Derbys

Apologies for not getting this up yesterday but I've been ill. I thought I couldn't feel any worse but apparently I could and listening to (couldn't get tickets) SWFC play Chesterfield did exactly that. I dont like people who call Praise or Grumble and talk about a game they haven't been to so I will always warn when i'm talking about a game I have attended (or watched on TV). I did feel however that it was important to make a few points on yesterday. I'm going to start with the positives because to be honest if I spend any more times thinking about the negatives i'll go barmy.

1) We started well, we sounded really up for it (as we should be!) and according to Megson we had the best start to a game since Tranmere. Given that starting badly has been an issue for us I think this is a real positive.

2) JJ started well again and looked good. I have to say I am impressed at his turn around in form and keep believing it can't last. Long may he prove me wrong.

3)  Nice to see Ryan Lowe starting and he seemed to do well.

Now onto the negatives.


1) JJ getting injured, that has to be one of the most frustrating and gutting things to hear. Please be some master plan by Megson to fool the blades

2) John Bostock - Please send him back he is awful. We should have known this as Brenford cancelled his loan early. I know Megson thinks he can get performances out of lazy,couldn't give a shit players and I think with JJ he has but Bostock is something else. I would be very upset to see him play on Sunday (or at all really).

3) We didn't turn up in the second half. I don't know what goes through the players minds when they cant turn up for such an important game.


4) We lost,simple as that really.Maybe it was a soft penalty,maybe we should have had one earlier but we can't change anything and we threw away 3 points.



We maybe do need perspective and I imagine if the blunts weren't involved would we all be feeling so low. It's not unusual to have a wobble and really we have done well this season but I understand we need to get promoted and to have a wobble now is not good but I do believe we can get through it. The way we started on Saturday was a huge positive and made me believe that more than ever that we can get out of this slump. Yes I'm nervous as hell for next Sunday but I'm always nervous as hell for a derby,yes I would have felt better going in on the back on 4 wins not 4 losses but there's fuck all we can do about that now. All we can do as fans is support our team and manager,whether we feel like it or not. Hillsborough is amazing when it's rocking and no matter how cliched this is we really can be the 12th man. 

I'm off to play Football Manager, I do love it but have to restrict myself normally as I could lose weeks on it! At one point last year I was so addicted I burnt my other halves Birthday dinner as I was so lost in the game and didn't want to stop.