“A trip to Bramall Lane for a meeting with the Blades, for whom this season has to rate as something of a disappointment so far. Their experience over the past few years almost mirrors that of Wigan Athletic – virtually unlimited funds for team building, a Premiership place, semi-finalists in Cup competitions, yet slipping down to League One status and only able to maintain a mid-table position. Sheffield United’s “sugar daddy” took the form of Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad bin Abdulaziz al Saud of the Saudi Royal family in September 2013, who promised substantial new capital with the aim of returning the Blades to the Premiership as quickly as possible. Nigel Adkins was appointed Manager last June, following quite a few well-known names holding that post – Neil Warnock, Micky Adams, Bryan Robson, Danny Wilson and Nigel Cough have all had a go without too much success.
United currently sit in 13th place, 9 points away from the play-offs with only 7 games remaining. Billy Sharp leads their goalscorers with 17 to his name, followed by Che Adams with 9. One player of theirs will register with Saddlers’ supporters – Florent Cuvelier the Belgian midfielder. He has suffered from severe knee injuries, and was loaned out to Burton Albion last season for match experience. His squad number is 33, but he doesn’t seem to have figured recently.”“Every season Sheff Utd say they will make a decision on the day to whether you can buy tickets on the day for some reason but it’s usually fine on the day, either go to their ticket office or there’s a ticket booth at the away end stand by the turnstiles. “
“These Premiershite wannabies are greedy barstewards, tickets are ALWAYS available for away supporters from the ticket office”
“Was told we had sold approx 600 as at 12.30pm Thursday”
“Christ that’s a poor effort so far!!
What do the lads gave to do.”“We’ll take over 1,000, but not many more. I don’t think the town quite believes yet. Would be nice to win but don’t see it as a “must win”. If we do win and Burton continue to stumble I think we’ll get the wind in our sails and take some bollocking big followings to Oldham and Bradford.”
“I recall the game in 1981 at Bramall Lane. Most scared I’ve ever been at a match in my life. Our players were scrapping their fans on the pitch whilst we tried to get out of Sheffield alive.
On the way home I remember the roadside being littered with Walsall fans who had parked up so they could celebrate our greatest of escapes without fear of being beaten up.
As we got back towards the West Midlands we twiddled with our very basic car radio to pick up BRMB reception so that we could hear all about our achievements and also make sure the horrific scenes of violence we had left behind hadn’t left any Walsall fan or player seriously injured. We needn’t have bothered. Villa had won the league by losing at Arsenal so events at Bramall Lane that day were barely a footnote.
There doesn’t seem to be a second of footage anywhere from that day which is amazing given how crucial the game was.
Still – “we sent the Blades down” was a refrain that was heard around Fellows Park for years afterwards.”“We hung on after the match and popped into a local newsagents and bought their version of the pink Argos (it was green).
Pasted over the front page was “BLADES DOWN!”. I still have it”“Scary day – remember a cheer going up on my coach when it turned on to the motorway.
Maybe its why I’ve always thought Sean Bean is a twerp”“This was the 1st game my girlfriend (now wife) ever went to.
Awful game except for the last 5 mins.
Same again on Saturday will do.”“Amazingly we managed to park on the main road almost outside the away end and at the final whistle we were pretty much first away, only stopping at the first off licence we found for some cans of McEwan’s. And then it was onto a suitable lay-by somewhere between Sheffield and Chesterfield (we didn’t use that part of the M1 for some reason), raising a can to every Saddler who drove by, in return for a toot.
I also remember at the final whistle the celebrations, included one bloke who was going wild and who waited till the end to tell us that he was a Wendy fan who had come along to see the enemy relegated!
I don’t know if it’s a false memory, but I am pretty sure that there was a PA announcement that Swindon had lost.”“I remember it well. If I remember right me and a few others where infuriated that they where attacking our players. But we couldn’t get on the pitch to help because there was a wire fence around us . I know we would probably not been here now if we had got on lol.but you don’t think of that at the time. I think it came over the tannoy that we had both stayed up. And we where clapping them as well. It wasn’t until we got back to Walsall that we found out it was a rouse to quell the violence. I had a tee shirt for ages with “we sent the blades down” embezzled on the front”
