Sheffield United vs Preston North End

36 UTB
I had seen. Dalglish was incredible and
I loved Heighway, Hanson and co, but
my generation, unless you were a red
of course, just got sick of them winning
everything. By contrast, there’s many clubs
who don’t win much or, indeed, anything at
all! I got excited when we unveiled Captain
Blade as a mascot. At that point it was a
highlight following relegation and pulling
down John Street only to find that we were
skint and couldn’t afford to rebuild it.
The board had decided 20 years before
that to press forward and we could not
survive any more as a three-sided stadium.
Notice was put on the cricket side to
leave, and the South Stand was built on
the wicket, it was at this time we were
surging towards Division Four football. You
couldn’t have made it up really. A decade
on from that demise and we were back
in the old Division Two once more with
three sides and not a lot to get excited
about. As a Blade, we have had some
pretty desperate times, but it’s that era, for
some reason, which always sticks out in
▲ John Gannon in action against Huddersfield
at Bramall Lane back in December 1995
my mind as being one of abject misery and
complete lack of any real direction.
Relegation was horrendous, and of that
there can be no doubt. Never did anyone
think that our proud and famous club
would find themselves in the basement
of the Football League, but even in that
dark hour there came a camaraderie, the
realisation that things really couldn’t get
any worse and we had to fight back. The
advent of Reg Brealey to chairman brought
a spending power to Ian Porterfield’s
pocket that helped build the team that
“THERE WAS STILL ENOUGH IN THE
WAY OF PRIMITIVE SANITATION
AND POTENTIAL FIRE HAZARDS
PRESENT TO KEEP EVEN THE
BIGGEST FOOTBALL PURIST HAPPY
UNTIL THE WRECKING BALL PUT
IT TO REST ONCE AND FOR ALL”
won the Championship at a canter and
gave legends for a new era such as Keith
Edwards and Colin Morris and also gave
Sheffield United its pride back. The mid-
90s just seemed to be like a boat on the
Graves Park lake with one oar. The good
work Reg did in the first place had really
unraveled, starting with the sale of Brian
Deane to Leeds, an act that saw chief exec
Derek Dooley inform him that he had “got
Sheffield United relegated” and he was, to
all intents and purposes, right.
Personally, I didn’t really blame the chair
of the club for the overall predicament.
Without him, when he took over, we were
in such a mess that there could well have
been no Sheffield United full stop, and he
had given us a couple of good years with
IP and also delivered Dave Bassett into our
arms who had given us two promotions,
seen us become founding members of
the Premier League, delivered us an
FA Cup quarter-final and semi-final and
SHEFFIELD UNITED vs PRESTON NORTH END