Season Preview 2025 – Part 5 07/08/2025
Posted by Matt Rowson in Thoughts about things.
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SHEFFIELD UNITED
**INS:**Mihail Polendakov (Septemvri Sofia, Undisclosed), Djibril Soumaré (Braga, Undisclosed), Ehije Ukaki (Botev Plovdiv, Undisclosed), Louie Barry (Aston Villa, Season Loan), Tyler Bindon (Nottingham Forest, Season Loan)
**OUTS:**Anel Ahmedhodžić (Feyenoord, £15,600,000), Miguel Freckleton (St Mirren, Undisclosed), Kiefer Moore (Wrexham, Undisclosed), Vinicius Souza (Wolfsburg, Undisclosed), Rhian Brewster (Derby County, Free), Antwoine Hackford (AFC Wimbledon, Free), Billy Blacker (Tranmere Rovers, Season Loan), Ben Brereton-Diáz (Southampton, End of Loan), Hamza Choudhury (Leicester City, End of Loan), Harry Clarke (Ipswich Town, End of Loan), Alfie Gilchrist (Chelsea, End of Loan), Rob Holding (Crystal Palace, End of Loan), Jesurun Rak-Sakyi (Crystal Palace, End of Loan)
**OUR EX-BLADES:**None
**THEIR EX-ORNS:**None
REPORT ARCHIVE:
Season H A FAC LC OTH
2024-25 1-2
2022-23 1-0 0-1
2019-20 0-0 1-1
2010-11 3-0
2009-10 3-0
2008-09 0-2 1-2
2005-06 2-3 4-1
2004-05 0-0 1-1 0-0
2003-04 0-2 2-2
2002-03 2-0 2-1
2001-02 0-3 2-0
2000-01 4-1 1-0
1998-99 1-1 0-3
1997-98 1-1/0-4
1995-96 2-1
POSSIBLE STARTING ELEVEN:
Cooper
Seriki Bindon Robinson Burrows
Arblaster Peck Hamer
Brooks Campbell Barry
**VERDICT:**In the end, it wasn’t all that close and the two point penalty looks irrelevant. An expensive week at the start of April in which the Blades lost three fixtures saw them drop from two points clear at the top to five points off the automatic places. In the end it was ten, and whilst that might overstate the shortfall – they might have won more than two of the remaining four had the horse not already bolted – there’s no avoiding that their ten League defeats doesn’t look great as compared to Leeds and Burnley losing six between them.
Going into the new campaign, Souza is the big loss with a suspicion that a side that attacks well might find itself (even more) susceptible to being hit on the break as a consequence. Ahmedhodžić, just this week, a prominent outgoing also. There are also concerns about the depth of the squad, particularly in defensive positions. Nonetheless, this is a club that hasn’t finished below fifth in the Championship since their first season back in the division after promotion in 2017-18 and retains the core of the side that finished third last time with some top young players in Arblaster and Peck as well as loanees Bindon and Barry. Play-offs, probably, but you’d begin to worry if they missed out again… tides take a long time to turn in the era of parachute payments but when they do, they can do so properly.
SHEFFIELD WEDNESDAY
**INS:**None
**OUTS:**Djeidi Gassama (Rangers, Undisclosed), Anthony Musaba (Samsunspor, Undisclosed), Callum Paterson (Franchise FC, Undisclosed), Akin Famewo (Hull City, Free), Michael Ihiekwe (Blackpool, Free), Michael Smith (Preston North End, free), Pol Valentin (Preston North End, Free), Mallik Wilks (Pendikspor, Free), Josh Windass (Wrexham, Free), Stuart Armstrong, Ben Hamer, Ryo Hatsuse, Marvin Johnson, Max Lowe, James Beadle (Brighton, End of Loan), Ibrahim Cissoko (Toulouse, End of Loan), Shea Charles (Southampton, End of Loan)
**OUR EX-OWLS:**None
**THEIR EX-ORNS:**Nathaniel Chalobah
REPORT ARCHIVE:
Season H A FAC LC OTH
2024-25 1-1 6-2
2023-24 1-0 0-0
2020-21 1-0 0-0
2014-15 1-1
2013-14 0-1
2012-13 2-1 4-1
2009-10 4-1
2008-09 2-2
2007-08 2-1
2005-06 2-1 1-1
2002-03 1-0 2-2
2001-02 3-1 1-2 0-4
2000-01 1-3 3-2
1999-00 1-0 2-2
1997-98 1-1/0-0
POSSIBLE STARTING ELEVEN:
Charles
Valéry Iorfa Otegbayo Bernard Palmer
Chalobah Bannan Inglesson
Cadamarteri J.Lowe
VERDICT: It comes to something when it’s quite likely that most Wednesday fans, at this point, would be happy enough to finish the season bottom of the table.
Not everyone of course. Every club has idiots. There were those on Wednesday messageboards as recently as a week ago arguing that the most plausible eleven that could be botched together from the club’s fifteen remaining professionals was good enough to be competitive. But in reality, “finish the season bottom” would be a result, meaning as it would both the finishing of the season – in itself far from a given at the time of writing – and by implication that something material had changed in the interim to facilitate that.
There’s no point regurgitating the sorry detail. If you care at all you’ll know much of it already (if not there are plenty better-informed sources of information that this blog). But what it boils down to is an existential threat to the football club. That we’re not Wednesday fans, that you might not have any connection to Wednesday at all, is neither here nor there. Empathising with this threat is not difficult, the potential loss of such a cornerstone of people’s lives. “There but for the grace of god….”, and so forth; whatever mistakes Gino Pozzo may have made in the interim and the ultimate insurance policy offered by Michael Ashcroft at the time notwithstanding it’s not really so very long since we were spared the possibility of a similarly horrific outcome. We got lucky, we were low-hanging fruit when Pozzo was looking for some. Wednesday would take any luck going at the moment.
Assessing the club’s potential (barring a brief doff of the cap to the remarkable Barry Bannan who tethered himself to the tiller of the sinking ship with a new contract at the weekend) is all but meaningless. Whatever can be sustained can’t hope to be competitive in this division; indeed, whilst it’s far from anyone’s priority at the moment as a consideration, last season’s performance is no baseline achieved as it was with finances that were demonstrably unsustainable. The only meaningful statement at this point in time is the first one; if Wednesday finish the season bottom, everyone will be happy.
SOUTHAMPTON
**INS:**Damion Downs (1.F.C.Köln, £7,000,000), Joshua Quarshie (Hoffenheim, £3,500,000)
**OUTS:**Kamaldeen Sulemana (Atalanta, £18,000,000), Jan Bednarek (Porto, Undisclosed), Joe Lumley (Bristol City, Free), Kyle Walker-Peters (West Ham United, Free), Adam Lallana, Juan Larios (Cultural Leonesa, Season Loan), Aaron Ramsdale (Newcastle United, Season Loan), Olllie Wright (Accrington Stanley, Season Loan), Albert Gronbaek (Rennes, End of Loan), Lesley Ugochukwu (Chelsea, End of Loan)
**OUR EX-SAINTS:**James Morris
**THEIR EX-ORNS:**Carl Martin (Possession Coach)
REPORT ARCHIVE:
Season H A FAC LC OTH
2023-24 1-1
2021-22 0-1
2019-20 1-3
2018-19 1-1 1-1
2017-18 2-2 2-0
2016-17 3-4
2015-16 0-2
2011-12 0-3
2008-09 2-2 3-0
2007-08 3-2
2005-06 3-0 3-1
2004-05 5-2
2002-03 1-2
1999-00 3-2 0-2
1982-83 4-1
1980-81 7-1
POSSIBLE STARTING ELEVEN:
Bazunu
Bree Harwood-Bellis Quarshie Manning
Charles Downes
Dibling Fernandez Brereton-Diaz
Archer
**VERDICT:**Animosity towards rival clubs is an odd thing. To a certain degree, if you’re actively supporting a club, it’s you against the world… there’s your team, and then there’s everybody else and differentiating between them is like rifling through the contents of your kitchen bin.
But stronger animosities, rivalries, exist of course. Most clubs will have at least one local rival, even if they’ve not played each other for years (Stoke City and Port Vale, 23 years and counting). Then there are competitive rivalries that come and go based, normally, on two teams finding themselves in the same sort of waters for a bit, going up and down together or competing for or to avoid the same things. One fractious meeting can spark a vendetta (and in the case of Palace and Brighton fuel a long-term rivalry). Palace were such rivals for a while, Norwich probably ought to be given the number of times we’ve gone up and down together but aren’t really.
But sometimes teams are just wanky. Not the clubs themselves… Palace have always been annoying but Southampton haven’t, not unless you consider existing and not being Watford to be annoying (see above). However the last incarnation of Southampton that we played against, the Russell Martin team that got promoted, was just horrible. “Shithousery” has become a sort of euphemism, a jokey, jovial, wink-of-the-eye label that tacitly respects the dark arts but it doesn’t apply to that Saints team which boasted precious little art and didn’t even merit backhanded compliments. They were just tossers.
So it will be interesting to see how much of that exited St Marys with their equally obnoxious former head coach. With Ivan Juric not even stopping long enough to get unpacked Will Still is the new man at the helm. I say “man”, he’s thirty-two of all things… though I suppose that’s hardly his fault, and as the partner of former voice of Vicarage Road Emma Saunders he at least deserves the benefit of any doubt that’s going.
Saints will be really good, despite being really bad by the required standards of last season. They’ve got more proper strikers than the rest of the division put together and a lot of quality in other places too, including the likes of Shea Charles and Ronnie Edwards who both did well on loan in the Championship last season. Automatic promotion, I suspect. You just hope that they’re a bit less irritating whilst they’re at it.
STOKE CITY
**INS:**Maksym Talovierov (Plymouth Argyle, Undisclosed), Sorba Thomas (Huddersfield Town, Undisclosed), Robert Bozenik (Boavista, Free), Aaron Cresswell (West Ham United, Free), Divin Mubama (Manchester City, Season Loan). Jamie Donley (Tottenham, Season Loan), Ashley Phillips (Tottenham, Season Loan)
**OUTS:**Wouter Burger (Hoffenheim, Undisclosed), Sol Sidibe (PSV Eindhoven, Undisclosed), Lynden Gooch (Huddersfield Town, Free), Jordan Thompson (Preston North End, Free), Michael Rose, Enda Stevens, Nathan Lowe (Stockport County, Season Loan), Tommy Simkin (Leyton Orient, Season Loan), Emre Tezgel (Crewe, Season Loan), Ali Al-Hamadi (Ipswich Town, End of Loan), Lewis Koumas (Liverpool, End of Loan), Andrew Moran (Brighton, End of Loan), John Wilson-Esbrand (Manchester City, End of Loan)
**OUR EX-POTTERS:**Daniel Bachmann, Tom Ince, Richard Johnson
**THEIR EX-ORNS:**Jack Bonham, Bosun Lawal, Ben Wilmot
Season H A FAC LC OTH
2024-25 3-0
2023-24 1-1
2022-23 2-0 4-0
2017-18 0-1 0-0
2016-17 0-1
2015-16 1-2
2007-08 0-0 0-0
2005-06 1-0 3-0
2004-05 0-1 1-0
2003-04 1-3 1-3
2001-02 1-2 2-1
1995-96 3-0
POSSIBLE STARTING ELEVEN:
Johansson
Tchamadeu Phillips Wilmot Bocat
Pearson Bae Baker
Manhoef Mubama Thomas
VERDICT: The really odd thing is that Stoke were never rubbish in the Premier League until the year they went down. That was 2017/18, their tenth consecutive season in the top flight; up to that point they’d been solidly mid-table at worst… very much established if not establishment, a mantle that Charlton, for instance, had worn before them and Brentford have worn since. Sound enough, well-run enough that you kind of forgot that they were punching just by being there.
But on relegation, Stoke sank straight into a death spiral around the Championship plughole. They’ve finished betweeen 14th and last season’s 18th, their lowest finish in over 20 years, in each of the seven seasons since and you fancy that nothing’s going to break them out of that purgatory. Not hiring Mark Robins as manager, not signing Jude Bellingham and Lamine Yamal, not signing you and your gran and your gran’s friend Enid with the dodgy knees and playing the three of you and Jonathan Walters in a complex, interchanging attacking formation. In as much as it’s possible to judge, the incomings don’t look particularly stronger than the outgoings… Burger a big loss, Aaron Cresswell feels like the sort of relic that Stoke always sign whilst I would have sworn that Sorba Thomas already played for them if you’d asked me.
All irrelevant. Seventeenth.