A Sheffield Wednesday Season Preview - Waiting For Not A Lot

It’s that time of year again – the telly is blaring out pictures of beaming fans cheering (rather than miserable away trips), Jeff Stelling is receiving his final waterproof coating, and fans of clubs in the ‘FL72’ as we’re now called - like a flu virus, are preparing for joy, despair and the narked indifference of predictable home 1-0 defeats.

Yet for Wednesdayites the clichés of wanton optimism and dramatic anticipation just don’t fit. Kids won’t proudly be marching through Hillsborough Park with the name of that new striker we needed stamped across their back for one simple reason – there isn’t one (yet). Until recently there wasn’t even an away kit.

For the source of frustration one only has to look at the front of our shirts, which bear the legend ‘Azerbaijan Land of Fire’. In May it adorned the shirt of the Champions League finalists Atletico Madrid, and in June it seemed that the man behind that move, Hafiz Mammadov was set to take-over at Hillsborough.

Reflections On The 25th Anniversary Of The Hillsborough Disaster

Liverpool fans who lost their lives remembered at the Leppings Lane End at Hillsborough yesterday (12/04/2014)

The next few days will be about Liverpool Football Club and those who tragically lost their lives at Hillsborough on 15 April 1989. As a Wednesdayite it invokes terrible feelings despite my being too young to remember the event. That stand I sat in for my first game had seen horrors I still can barely imagine. My club, who I love, were complicit in the needless deaths of 96 people.  As a football fan and human being it invokes disgust and shivers.

Wikipedia's Exclusive: Carlton Palmer Set To Take Over From Sir Alex Ferguson At Man United?

Most of the footballing world seems to think that David Moyes is set to take over from Sir Alex Ferguson upon his retirement from management.

However if Wikipedia is to be believed this evening the Scot is only set to get the job because a more absurdly legged man turned the job down to spend more time with his betting company:

 

As someone who's witnessed Carlton's heroic feats in the flesh, all I can say is that the Stretford End should be weeping salt tears that they won't get to sing about Carlton's alleged predilection for a toke on the funny fags, nor his proportionately tiny head next season.

On second thoughts, maybe it's the hilarious web-japeseters who've had too much of Carlton's rumoured herbal remedy of choice.

Sir Alex Ferguson's Greatest Achievement Is One Even Manchester United Fans Should View With Regret

In the end its unpredictability was strangely predictable – after the farrago around his previous attempt to retire in 2002 Sir Alex Ferguson was never going to announce his retirement in advance. 

Yet the announcement in some ways still comes as a shock; the end of an era, to use a phrase that will adorn social media networks and lazy hagiographies.

Despite his unprecedented success in the game, with only the combined total of Liverpool’s boot room boys competing as far as honours are concerned, Ferguson still is a polarising figure and one whose achievements have been difficult to love.