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The Wednesday ‘way’


HoylandOwl

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The thing about ‘The Wednesday way’ in terms of disappointments etc. Where/where did it start? 
Obviously it comes from losses, but when? I’ve experienced the relegations since the 80s, 93s cup finals and the playoffs. 
I’m not being a pessimist here, as I still think we’re going up this season.

It just made me think about it last night when I saw folks on social media going on about it again.

Let’s have a whinge and get it all out before Saturday. 
 

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The 121st minute of the FA Cup final replay 1993, coming not long after the two Steve Bruce goals in Fergie time.

Even while the team was still good we kept conceding late goals and the fear never left us. Transmits through the generations and caused a general lack of confidence. 

That’s my theory anyway. 

 

Edited by Chelters
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The point is every Club will have their way of creating angst from the jaws of glory. It is all relative, for some like Man City it will be about not yet winning the Champions League, for us its the more mundane of escaping League 1

My starting point was at the lowest ebb of the club, I didn't go to many games at that young age but I saw the shootout with Southend end of the 1976 season. After that it was a steady improvement and the Semi Final losses in 1983 and 1986 were tough to take. The 1990 relegation was however my first real experience of that, the angst is long forgotten by the joy of what was to come in 1991

The FA Cup Final was the missed opportunity but I find the Wednesday way is generated more from the Boardroom than on the pitch. What we get is more the symptom of how it was run off it. Fail to plan : Plan to Fail  This current season is perhaps the exception to that rule.  

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5 hours ago, HoylandOwl said:

That cup final replay loss absolutely ruined me. It was THE one the FA Cup, the one I’d dreamt of us winning, not the league, not the league cup, the FA Cup.

Went to bed in tears, I've still got that goal ingrained in my dreams.

Woods totally & utterly flapped at that.

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Relegated from the Premier. Dog shit and Wilson should've been sacked long before he was. Diddy dodgy Dave gave zero fucks and was just lining up a position at the Premier trough. Went down and fucking Bradfud stayed up! Incompetence after incompetence at the top and so a firesale starts, they get our players and we got the useless oaf manager.

We can get straight backup... New season begins...

13 seconds later, that's us fucked then! Been one long mess after another since then, few glimmers but even in the new dawn it starts pissing down

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I get all the disappointments. I started watching when the club was at a very low ebb and only avoided the 4th Division on the last day of the season.

However, I’m mindful we might be talking up our woes as though no one else has them, so I’m a bit dubious as to whether the Wednesday Way is just “this is football” and indeed sport, shit happens. Yes we’ve had incompetent leadership at times but we’ve also had some good times over the last 50years, just a lot meh times as well.

Let’s face it we aren’t the only club thats aimed for the stars and fell on hard times. There are only really a handful of clubs that have sustained a reasonable level of success. In some respects the lows make the highs better. 
Im sure some would swap our lot for that of say Everton of the last 25years but whilst they’ve been in the PL theyve not really done much, like several other clubs that have basically not troubled the top spots in the PL or the final rounds of the cups.

My gripe is those clubs with next to no tradition, small fan bases and seemingly owners that aren’t really engage in English football but manage to get their clubs into the PL or top half of the Championship (I’m sure you can name a few) and clubs like ours languish in L1, but hopefully for not much longer.

Edited by Tank_Owl2,0
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The club still commands respect amongst those that know football, despite the fact that we have been average to poor for 20 years, and aside from a couple of early years under Chansiri, really haven’t had a pot to piss in, in that time.

I suppose it’s a question? What is the Wednesday way? I always used to have the mindset that, if your striker hasn’t scored for 6 months? He’ll bag against Wednesday. Have you not won away all season? You’ll get a win at Hillsborough. Not kept a clean sheet for a season? Wednesday are coming to your ground so that will change. Etc. Etc. That mindset was born out of the fact that since 2000, we’ve probably spent more than half of that time in the bottom third of whatever league we were in. Which translates into us being a fairly shit team. Which then answers the question as, the Wednesday way is that we aren’t a very good team that loses more than we win, has the odd glimmer of success but has criminally underperformed despite having a very loyal and large fan base.

The reasons for underperforming you can pin point purely at the running of the club. And that’s been with multiple custodians even up to today.

But, I also remember the 80’s and 90’s when we were a force domestically. Which amazes me that the current generation are as loyal as they are, they didn’t see any of that. Blood runs deep as they say.

 

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My Dad always referred to us as a yo yo club - certainly were in the 50s and 60s 

It just seems that the good times were allowed to peter out. We didn't build on the foundations Wilkinson set, the unlucky part was Atkinson leaving and where he could have taken that squad.

The drop in 1990 and immediate return perhaps gave false hope that similar could apply in 2000. How wrong was that. 

The Wednesday way is really underachieving from where we should be and the struggle to accept that our perception of status means fuck all when it comes to league position

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I never thought we’d bounce back jn 2000.. we didn’t have the players or even a half decent manager like we did in 90.  But certainly didn’t think 20 odd years later we’d never have been back in the top flight

we are now a club that flits between the championship and league 1 with a big old stadium and a history of real success 100 years ago

 

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They were two points ahead of us with three left, drew two and lost one without Evans and we win all of ours.

Their earlier record against the three they played was 1W:1D:1L so in theory match that form and they get 92pts, still behind us, and ched only scored once in those three games.

Would he have made that big of a difference?

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As I've just mentioned in the match thread the Wednesday Way, for, me is the constant digging out of our players by some of our fans. 

I don't mind anyone having an opinion on a player's attributes but we've all been sat next to someone who's shouted "you're shit" before a sub has even come on. Players that have taken a torrid amount of abuse then scored a goal or made a great tackle and the 'abuser' has acknowledged it's a great goal/tackle but he's still shit though (Nuhiu, Cunningham, Haslam, Mirocevic???) 

We have a toxic element within our fan base that aren't prepared to back a particular player no matter what. It's like they pick one then ride his back like a Blackpool donkey. When he's subbed or doesn't start then that just gives them their justification that they were right. 

 

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3 hours ago, Tylluan said:

As I've just mentioned in the match thread the Wednesday Way, for, me is the constant digging out of our players by some of our fans. 

I don't mind anyone having an opinion on a player's attributes but we've all been sat next to someone who's shouted "you're shit" before a sub has even come on. Players that have taken a torrid amount of abuse then scored a goal or made a great tackle and the 'abuser' has acknowledged it's a great goal/tackle but he's still shit though (Nuhiu, Cunningham, Haslam, Mirocevic???) 

We have a toxic element within our fan base that aren't prepared to back a particular player no matter what. It's like they pick one then ride his back like a Blackpool donkey. When he's subbed or doesn't start then that just gives them their justification that they were right. 

 

I’ve had a neutral with us today at S6 and he couldn’t believe how quickly the fans turned on the players. Says it all. 

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8 minutes ago, HoylandOwl said:

I’ve had a neutral with us today at S6 and he couldn’t believe how quickly the fans turned on the players. Says it all. 

25 years of general shite takes its toll in the end 

And the feeling of underperforming against the resources available.

Let's be honest this squad would need a radical overhaul to be competitive in the Championship. Our rivals seem to have developed  playing decent football with a youthful streak

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1 minute ago, Chelters said:

Definitely disappointing how many fans seem to have given up so quickly on a team that has given so much this season, last few games notwithstanding of course. 

I honestly don't think Wednesday fans have been convinced most of the season. Well until the arrogance kicked in and we presumed this was a fait accompli, talking about points records 

 

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1 hour ago, Winco said:

We’ve lost twice in 26 games and are top of the league and still moan.

We will be reyt.

I absolutely hope you're right, Winco, but I'm seriously struggling to have your faith after what I've watched recently.  You just wouldn't think it was the same team!

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2 hours ago, mkowlthesexynewversion said:

I honestly don't think Wednesday fans have been convinced most of the season. Well until the arrogance kicked in and we presumed this was a fait accompli, talking about points records 

 

This. Although I'm a contradiction. I thought Moore would never get us automatic. But,despite us not playing great in lot of games, we developed a back bone and dug in to get job done. I thought I'd thankfully hot it very wrong. 

Now.....?

If we end up in play offs not a chance we'll win them

Long way to go yet though 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Well this was a salient thread.

We should change our name to FFS Wednesday.

I just wish I could dis-engage from the misery of following us. Tongue in cheek to a degree, but in any other facet of life if a person or organisation continually let you down, you wouldn't keep going back.

Sadly I consider most of this is self inflicted. With our current owner this malaise will never get reversed. It actually needs a fresh plan, fresh ideas, a long term objective to build solid foundations. There are positives, you see some signs of improvement, but its barely just keeping up with everyone else, certainly not moving ahead. I mean at the EFL level.

This summer whatever division we are in will be another re-build come what may. It simply is not a sustainable method 

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1 hour ago, mkowlthesexynewversion said:

Well this was a salient thread.

We should change our name to FFS Wednesday.

I just wish I could dis-engage from the misery of following us. Tongue in cheek to a degree, but in any other facet of life if a person or organisation continually let you down, you wouldn't keep going back.

Sadly I consider most of this is self inflicted. With our current owner this malaise will never get reversed. It actually needs a fresh plan, fresh ideas, a long term objective to build solid foundations. There are positives, you see some signs of improvement, but its barely just keeping up with everyone else, certainly not moving ahead. I mean at the EFL level.

This summer whatever division we are in will be another re-build come what may. It simply is not a sustainable method 

I actually think we have seen the shoots of ‘learning’ so I am not as despondent as I have been previously. I felt that we recruited to a clear plan in the summer, whereas the years previously, we recruited for the sake of it.

Now, you can argue whether the recruitment has been good enough, but no-one had an issue with the players we brought in - on paper, they’d all had great success at previous clubs at this level and many have promotions on the record. But, we’ve had a few flops. Wilkes, flop. Bakinson, flop. Mighten, flop. Hunt, flop. From the previous year, more players have failed, Brown, Sow, Adeniran, Wing, John-Jules, Kamberi, Gibson, Shodipo and even Corbeanu.

Our issue, again, has been injuries. Byers has missed a chunk of games again, Windass will miss another chunk of games. Heneghan, season over. Ihiekwe, 4 months. Famewo, 3 months. James, 3 months. Gregory has missed big chunks. Even the flops such as Wilkes and Adeniran have had longs spells out.

I am all for building a clear strategy which should be based on recruiting to a certain age, moving on any and all players over a certain age, it’s the right thing to do. But, would Wednesday fans accept that a rebuild of that size might take two summers, and could lead to maybe another three years in League one? And it may also take two managers to sort it? I think the issue is that we as fans think short term. If Chansiri sacked Moore, brought in another coach and then said, we are going to build properly but it might take time - would we accept it?

The answer is no, even if it is clearly the right thing to do, and that boils down to expectation versus reality. The fans expectation is still we should be challenging at the top of the Championship, the reality is that we are nothing more than a bottom third championship, top third league one team. And to meet fans expectations, we need to rebuild and be allowed time to rebuild.

Unfortunately, our supporters won’t look beyond next week. Which is why, until an owner tells the fans to bollocks, it will never improve. We are stuck in a short term cycle because we underservedly expect success, and we heap pressure on everyone at the club when we don’t get it.

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That expectation of success though KM, is something that is throughout football right now and has been for sometime. It's all part of the getting to the Premier League is everything, thing which is IMO born out of the money in the top level and the lure of signing players that everyone knows, and the shiny shiny. Patience is no longer a virtue in football right across the board in general. 

I agree with you that by and large, there have been shoots of revival. It's impossible to ignore the unbeaten run as proof of that, also those moments in that run when we were so solid at the back and almost watertight. Now, we've got a bloody river running through the back 3/4/5 every game it seems! The players we signed pre last season, were largely going to be failures, because we were expecting a silk purse when shopping in Primark. Less so this year but even so, we're not going to be signing players in League One who are of Premier League standard and we're back to the expectation thing. Yes, I have been guilty of it a little, with the likes of Bakinson who has been one of the worst signings for me in a while. He's just so off it on so many levels, and has previously (if fans reports are to be believed) had issues around commitment/temperament so what should we have expected. 

BUT, re expectation, I can't really say I know anyone who didn't truly have some expectation in their mind that towards the end of that 23 game run that we wouldn't go up. Aside from the 'Wednesday way' being in your head for a moment. The team and performances built up that expectation, not some deluded, or even jokey HMS piss the league post. So I can see where and why there's huge frustration at the moment. 

We need to get out of League One, even if it's squeaking through the back door.. For now, and the future.

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