Megson & Mandaric bring hope to Wednesday

Here's a piece I wrote for the WSC Daily section of the When Saturday Comes website http://www.wsc.co.uk/content/view/7310/38/



It's been a long since this sign intimidated visiting teams.

 8 June ~ Considering that Sheffield Wednesday have just endured the third-worst League placing in their 144-year history, there’s a genuine sense of optimism around Hillsborough. Now that Wednesday have finally shrugged off the crippling millstone of debt and neighbours United were kind enough to drop down and join us in League One, the feeling among most Owls fans is that the “natural order” of football in Sheffield will soon be restored. Admittedly, the fact that there will be Steel City derbies in the third tier for the first time since 1980 is a source of acute embarrassment for England’s fourth-largest city.


Starved of success, the bitter rivalry between Owls and Blades has created an insular attitude towards the wider world of football – “I don’t care where we finish as long as we beat them lot twice” is a common mantra from both sets of fans on local radio phone-ins.


Yet, by the end of March it looked like the clubs might not be renewing hostilities next season after all. The appointment in February of former Owls midfielder Gary Megson was supposed to have galvanised a talented yet collectively incohesive squad to push for at least a play-off spot, but things actually got a lot worse. Wednesday slipped perilously close to the relegation places and an unthinkable first appearance in the Football League’s basement division was becoming a distinct possibility. This was a scenario not even the most pessimistic of Owls would have envisaged after Milan Mandaric’s 11th-hour takeover enabled the club to avoid a second winding-up petition of the season and clear colossal debts amassed by over 15 years of financial mismanagement.


As a player, Megson’s tenacious style had made him a key member of Howard Wilkinson’s 1984 promotion-winning side and, just like his old boss, he picks a team where fitness and physicality come first. This ethos eventually steered Wednesday to a comfortable finish but it has caused ripples of discontent among fans that would prefer Wednesday to start their long overdue revival playing something akin to the champagne football of Ron Atkinson’s early-1990s side. Megson can, however, do something no Wednesday manager has been able to do since that era: be competitive in the transfer market. We aren’t expecting Di Canios or Carbones but it will make the long summer break much more exciting.


Across the city, another former Owls player, Danny Wilson, has become perhaps the most controversial managerial appointment in Sheffield United’s history, being welcomed to Bramall Lane by “Love United, Hate Wilson” banners. Despite playing in Big Ron’s 1991 League Cup-winning side, as Wednesday manager painful memories of an 8-0 humiliation at Newcastle and subsequent relegation from the Premier League had already tarnished his reputation. Taking charge of the Blades is fine by us. In fact we found the whole furore highly amusing. If he does half as good a job as Micky Adams did, then his Hillsborough hero status will be reinstated. Richard Salguero

Many Happy Returns?

Cádiz’s centenary year promotion struggle

Segunda División B is a tough league to get out of. Sure, you’ve heard that said by many an embittered lower league manager as a thinly veiled pre-season disclaimer, but with no automatic promotion spots, the only means of escape from the third tier of Spanish football is through a multi-regional play-off system. Little wonder then that it has the lugubrious nickname of ‘El Pozo’ ('The Pit').

Not the best place then for Cádiz to celebrate their centenary season, and it’s been as tumultuous a year as any of their previous 100. With rising debts, dwindling attendances (not helped by the region having amongst the highest unemployment rates in Spain) and protests against the club president, it was hardly the party they would have imagined just five years ago when the club graced the Primers Liga. Los Amarillos have since suffered three relegations, although they clambered out of Segunda B at the first attempt in 2008/09, they were immediately relegated from the Liga Adelante last season.

This season started out as brightly as the glorious Andalucían sunshine for Cádiz, with five wins (and draw against eventual table toppers Real Murcia) in their first six games. But, just as the Cadistas were anticipating a repeat of two seasons ago when their team looked a class apart at this level, a disappointing run of five defeats in seven led to Serbian coach Hristo Vidakovic being shown the door at the Estadio Ramón de Carranza. This was most likely a fire exit as a complete renovation project has left much of the stadium a construction site.

A recurring theme for the early stages of the campaign was a disciplinary record in Cádiz’s games that certainly lived up to the “fiery Latin temperament” cliché. Los Amarillos and their opponents each received eight red cards, with Cádiz finishing three games with just nine men. The 1-0 home victory over AD Ceuta saw the side based in mainland Africa reduced to eight, which was not all that surprising considering they were coached at the time by none other than Andoni Goikoetxea, whose ankle-ligament-shredding tackle on Barcelona’s youthful Diego Maradona earned him the infamous nickname of ‘The Butcher of Bilbao’.

Vidakovic’s replacement, José González embarked on his third spell in charge at the Carranza in just eight years by making an immediate impact, winning his first four games including a notable 2-1 victory over the then leaders Sevilla Atletico (the ‘B’ side of Sevilla FC). Yet Cádiz’s performances were often unconvincing and another inconsistent run at the turn of the year culminated in a 1-1 draw with Lucena in front of just 2,000 fans, the lowest crowd at the Carranza in years. The result also saw Los Amarillos slip outside the top four, and crucially, the play-off positions.

Rayo Vallecano fans sympathise with Cádiz (complete with portraits of the two clubs' presedentes)

But events on the pitch have been the least of Cádiz’s worries. Debts amounting to a cojones-shrinking €13.5m meant administrators were called in to pick their way through some dubious bookkeeping and it was revealed that players hadn’t been paid for two months. With groups from the Middle East and Mexico rumoured to be interested in rescuing the club, the Cadistas sought to apply pressure the club’s owner, Antonio Muñoz with their ‘Vende y Vete’ (Sell and Go) campaign. In an act of extraordinary solidarity, fans of Segunda División Rayo Vallecano - themselves in similar financial dire straits and demanding boardroom changes - displayed banners of their club badge alongside that of Cádiz’s bearing the sentiment, “Two shared emotions, the same big mess”.

Veteran defender Raúl López issued a rallying call for the closing stages of the season: “Son siete jornados y son siete finales.” (“There are seven games and seven finals.”). Standard stuff from a beleaguered skipper you might think, but amazingly it inspired Cádiz to suddenly find their richest vein of form since they took the Segunda División title in 2005. In the penultimate game of the season Los Amarillos faced fellow promotion hopefuls CD Roquetas seeking a sixth consecutive win that would clinch a Segunda B Grupo 4 play-off spot. Of course, they had to do it the hard way, overturning a 1-0 deficit with 10 minutes to go, in front of a rapturous Carranza crowd.

That goal celebration

In the play-off semi-final Cádiz were drawn against Club Deportivo Mirandés who had finished 2nd in Segunda B Grupo 1 (the northern and Basque regions). Dani Cifuentes celebrated Cádiz’s second goal in a 2-0 first-leg victory by making a double-V sign to the Cadistas. Did it symbolise v-for-victory or vende y vete? If they can escape El Pozo and with a Brazilian group fronted by Ronaldinho’s brother the new favourites to take over the club, perhaps it meant both. Here’s hoping Los Amarillos’ big birthday bash can end up being a celebration to remember, because believe me; few cities in the world can do a fiesta as well as Cádiz.