It’s so far, so good for Blades’ brave brand of front-foot football
SATURDAY sees City’s first trip to Sheffield United on league duty for eight years.
After regular fixtures in the 2000s the club’s fortunes diverged: Leicester were on the up, while United dropped to the third tier and stayed there for six seasons.
But the Blades are back, with lifelong fan and former player Chris Wilder leading them to two promotions in three seasons.
After starting the season with a draw at Bournemouth and a rousing home win over Palace, they are becoming one of the stories of the new Premier League season.
Undaunted by their step up to the top flight, United still like to play on the front foot, overloading areas of the opposition’s half and employing overlapping centre-halves.
That might sound as reckless as cycling downhill with your arms folded, but it has worked up to now and fortune favours the brave.
I have to admit a certain affinity with the Blades, although I hope they come unstuck against us on Saturday.
Throughout the 1990s, The Fox fanzine was printed in Sheffield and I would drive up the M1 once a month to collect each issue.
I would often arrive a couple of hours before it had been stapled and boxed up, and would wander round the city, for lunch and a pint, and got to know Sheffield well.
I would always nip into a big sports shop that had all the new kits, and here was a reminder that both United and Wednesday were in the new Premier League, a position that City were desperately trying to achieve.
I would also have a wander round Bramall Lane, as I seem to be magnetically attracted to football grounds wherever I go.
If Sheffield was successful on the field, the city was very run down at the time with big swathes of postindustrial wasteland. My printer was located up some creaking stairs on the top floor of a crumbling old factory called Trafalgar Works, which I always presumed was because it was built in 1805, the year of the battle. It certainly looked like it.
But over that decade cranes began to dominate the skyline and Sheffield improved with almost every visit. Not everything worked. The National Centre for Popular Music, shaped like a drum, opened in March 1999, and closed in June 2000. But the Winter Gardens in the heart of the city were a fantastically imaginative addition.
In the midst of this came a trip to Bramall Lane in October 1995 that remains one of my favourite away games. City, having a great run under Mark McGhee, were top of Endsleigh League Division One. Iwan Roberts put us into a 5th minute lead, before an equaliser from Jostein Flo temporarily halted the party in the away end.
The second half saw that wonderful passing game that we enjoyed during McGhee’s brief spell and goals from Scott Taylor and David Lowe secured a 3-1 win.
As we chanted “We are top of the league!” from the top tier of the away stand, what we didn’t know was that McGhee would depart two months later.
What we also didn’t know was that we’d get promoted anyway.