Fook me, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse…it does…when you thought we couldn’t go any lower…there’s another rung down the ladder…and just when ya thought the shit couldn’t get any deeper…in walks the warden and shouts 'back on your heads'.

I admit it…I buy most things the club throws at me…I fall for it all, hook line and sinker….Investment due, buy early, new shirt, join in, give us ya money, bend over, stand up...that’s me. Call me gullible if ya like, call me a sucker, idiot, loony…I’m all that and more, I know I am…but I’m also an optimist, especially with footy and especially with my team. I can’t help it…I don’t know why though TBH because it just means my heart gets broken more often than most. I’d rather look for the best of things, look for the best of someone rather than dig around in the dirt hoping I can find something to discredit them with or to show folk everything’s not as good as they think it is… But my heart is in absolute bits now…and those bits have been stamped on and scattered…it’s fookin horrible.

We’ve had probably the worst season I can remember…even with my bad memory I can remember a few poor seasons but this one is right up there with the best…of the worst.

I can take a lot of shit…and I mean a LOT of shit but this season it just never ends does it?

This season has taken it’s toll on us all…the traveling isn’t what gets us down…it isn’t even the losing that gets us down, we’ve grown accustomed to that over the years but we NEED scraps to cling to…we NEED hope to keep us coming back for more and even me, with my ever optimistic outlook...well, I’m finally on me knees…I’ve stuck up for the players and managers this season, always looking for the good bits of a game rather than the bad but I’m done now…As I say, we don’t mind traveling long distances, I used to look forward to it…the banter on the way, the craic when we get there, the giddiness of new and different places, meeting new fans, in new towns and cities….Not too long ago I couldn’t sleep the night before a game with my giddiness factor through the roof, I was like a kid at Christmas….this season though it’s been very hard work…getting out of bed with the prospect of 4 hours driving ahead and nothing to cheer us up coming home…well, it didn’t exactly make me want to bound out of bed.

If we’d had a few wins or decent performances to cling to, to give us hope, maybe a wonder goal to dwell on, that would have been enough…but they were too few and way too far between. A lot of fans gave up themselves way before we got to that fateful game against Palace.

I’ve always been of the opinion that if the players give us everything they have, 100%, on the pitch, I can forgive them…if they aren’t good enough, it’s not their fault, they were just beaten by better players but a lack of effort is entirely down to them. Well, I don’t think we’ve had the effort over the whole season, I think they’ve been severely lacking in application and when they did get around to putting it in, it was too little too late. On paper this team of individuals was not a relegation team, we expected a lot from them and most of us couldn’t wait to see what they were actually capable of. At the start of the season, we were quivering with anticipation, oh aye...BRING IT ON!
           

           
Fook me we didn’t have to wait long to find out what the long, long season ahead was gonna bring…by the end of the first game in that August sunshine we had all the info we needed…It’s been poor, piss poor ever since and the team definitely underperformed and I feel incredibly let down by them.

If all that wasn’t bad enough I come back off holiday to find my season ticket that I’ve pre-booked has been lowered in price. I’m not even gonna get a refund of the extra I’ve paid but I get some points to spend in the shop, not enough points to actually buy anything but I can put them towards something that costs more, so I end up spending even more of my hard earned wage than if I’d waited to buy my season ticket.

I find the investment company that was gonna change our fortunes on the pitch and lead us into a bright, shiny new future aren’t all they were made out to be and not only want us on the cheap they were trying to roger us for pennies without the courtesy of a reach around.

I find that the pre-season tour that we ALL get excited about, that warms us up for the forthcoming season, no matter what division we’re in, we always look forward to it....it's a tradition...well this season it's to be the biggest non event in the history of non events.

Don’t get me wrong, I like visiting clubs like Grimsby, I genuinely do…I don’t even mind going to our bigger local rivals Barnsley to take some much needed extra pre-season abuse…it’s not like we’ve had enough shit thrown at us just yet anyway so going to Oakwell for some bonus shitage is all good….but to have no overseas trip to look forward to, or even Scotland/Wales/Ireland trip, well it’s just more of the same ‘grind-em-into-the-dirt-as-much-as-ya-can-there’s-no-end-to-what-they’ll-take’ mentality that football fans seem to get from their clubs these days.

To top it all off the chairman resigns… I like Lee Strafford….I really do. That hasn’t changed just because he’s gone and it won’t change. I like people who have enthusiasm for a job, who approach it with gusto and zest and he did that every single time I saw him, he always had a smile on his face...and that alone can’t have been easy. I’ve seen him and spoken to him at away games and even when things haven’t been going well he mirrored my own feelings, smiling through the adversity, trying to keep upbeat about it all. I know Lee wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea but you won’t convince me that the previous chairmans SWAG (Service With A Grunt) attitude was better than anything Lee Strafford has brought to this club.

I think he’s a genuine bloke who wears his Wednesday heart on his sleeve and ALWAYS had the very best interests of this club not only at his heart but kept it as his own driving force through some very turbulent times. I like that about folk….anyone…especially when they share the same passion as I do. I like someone who gives themselves totally to a job and I truly believe he’s done that, maybe at times, he’s given a little too much of himself and been drawn into things he shouldn’t have but again, I can really empathise with that too….I’ve been there…I’m STILL there and STILL doing it and I’ll continue to do that very same thing so I can hardly condemn him for doing the same can I?

I never thought the Chairman of my football club would want to know what I think, as a fan…what I want as a fan for my club…I never thought he’d say, “not only do I care but I want to hear it and I want to share what I want for this club with you”
I doubt this club will ever have that sort of openness again, that we’ll ever have that close connection between fan and boardroom again and I find that a little sad to be honest.

Maybe it was a step too far…maybe it was too much of a swing in the opposite direction from the previous regime…but even with Lee’s obvious faults I still liked what was happening off the pitch…what he was trying to achieve…to actually modernise this club and drag it kicking and screaming into the modern world…unfortunately on the pitch they let him…AND they let US down.
No matter how much great stuff you do away from the pitch, behind the scenes, if the team don't perform then all your hard work is for nothing. If they had put as much effort into their jobs ON the pitch as Lee Strafford did into his off it, then this club would have been Premiership bound.
           

           
All the good intentions and best laid plans will mean nothing, they HAVE meant nothing, when the product on the pitch is tripe and that’s exactly what the professionals at this club have served us up all season…TRIPE! (And not the good tripe)
I am absolutely convinced we’ve lost a good bloke here and I for one hope we see him back some time in the future. If not in the same role at least something that makes the best use of his talents to continue to modernise this stone age club.
I wish him well in all he does and hope to see him very soon at a game….He may have lost his job but he’s still a Wednesday fan with SWFC in his heart. How many of those still left on the board can honestly say that?

I have absolutely no idea what finally brought about Lee's resignation but those in charge of this club now had better get their fookin fingers out though because you can only treat the fans like shit for so long and we’re at the end of our very long blue and white tether now.

I doubt my heart has ever been as heavy following this club as it is right now and I really don’t know when all this shit will end and when the gloom will lift, when we can have a bit of hope again…
           

           
Well….I’ll tell you when it’ll be…it’ll probably be a sunny day in Cleethorpes in July…when I see black and white striped shirts and it gets hammered home to me that it’s not Newcastle we're playing and I see all the Wednesday shirts mixed amongst them eating fish and chips and on the way to the ground…when I first hear us all singing again….’Wednesday Til I Die’….when we meet up for a drink and start nattering about the season ahead…about Charlton away, Southampton away, Brentford, Hartlepool and Carlisle, Brighton and Bournemouth…the away days…we’ll look forward to em all again…we’ll talk excitedly again about em all…it doesn’t matter who it’s against, it’s OUR team against their team and that’s all that ever matters in the end…more excitement at the new signings…new favourites…the players we’ve lost...how good they were, how bad they were…’We’ll never have anyone that good again’….’He was stealing a living that bloke’….watching sky sports, looking over someones head whilst queuing at the bar to try and see the telly at the far end…hearing Jeff Stelling tell us about another former Wednesday player scoring for someone else…’That’s 6 goals in 5 games for the former Sheffield Wednesday player’….and all of us wondering why they never did that for us…someone taking the time to explain WHY they never did that for us…talking about the chairman and the board…someone mishearing it and saying they loved Chairman of the Board and how their hit ‘Give Me Just A Little More Time’ is an underrated classic….Everyone singing that song and forgetting about the original conversation…talking about how bad things are at the club and the older heads saying ‘It’s still not as bad as when I had me feather cut and flurs on….now them really was bad days” And watching younger fans in the middle of that sentence as they glaze over and yawn, then take more notice of the bag strap between the breasts of the lass that just came in…we’ll put all the bad shit to the sword, we’ll disect it and we’ll talk it to death and finally we’ll put it all behind us…we’ll chat excitedly again and before ya know it, the hope will be back and we’ll be a playoff team…a top 3 team…an automatic promotion team…on a long FA Cup run…booking our hotels for Wembley…a team that can hold our own in the Championship and we’ll do the double over the Blades next season…the top Yorkshire side….

Oh aye…once the momentum starts there’s no stopping an optimistic footy fan.

It doesn’t take us mugs long to put it all behind us does it?

Fook the bastards that try to bring this club down…fook the lot of em.

We’re Wednesday Til We Die and we’ll be here long after they’ve all fooked off.
           

           
UTO FTB

Steve:Beastie
Owls Alive