Hundreds of youngsters rush down to the front row of the Tony Currie Stand as the final whistle sounds at a sun-soaked Bramall Lane, eagerly clamouring for autographs from the Sheffield United Women’s players. They plead at the top of their voices to be the recipient of a Sheffield United shirt that is going to be presented to a lucky fan by the men’s team manager, Chris Wilder, who has also been watching from the stands. Looking at the grins on the faces of most of the 3,754 attendees, they had a great afternoon out. On the pitch, however, a scene of red and white dejection tells a different story.
Sheffield United’s head coach, Ash Thompson, and his staff have troubled expressions on their faces while some players have sunk to the ground after a 2-0 defeat against Portsmouth leaves them one point above the Championship relegation zone with five games of the season remaining. Portsmouth, who are bottom, are beside themselves after finally securing their first win of the campaign, hugging, beaming and dancing in front of their travelling supporters, with hope in their eyes 10 months after their last league win.
The visitors’ pivotal victory means the Championship looks poised for a nail-biting, three-way relegation battle, with Portsmouth having moved not just within one point of Sheffield United but also just two points behind ninth-placed Blackburn Rovers, who lost 2-0 at home against the league leaders, Birmingham City, also on Sunday. All three teams are fighting to avoid occupying the Championship’s single relegation spot, with only one team going down this season after Reading’s 11th-hour withdrawal from the league last June, reducing the Championship from 12 to 11 members.
And the stakes are high. For participating in the second tier this season, clubs were understood to be guaranteed a minimum of £400,000-£450,000 of centralised funding through a combination of league-wide broadcast revenue and what was known as a workforce grant, provided by the Football Association. Drop into the third tier, the Women’s National League, and centralised funding drops to virtually zero.
It is not yet clear how much money Championship clubs will receive from being in the league next season now that the top-two tiers are run by an independent company, Women’s Professional Leagues Ltd, rather than the FA. But nonetheless, the potential drop-off in cashflow is a cliff edge.
The pressure to stay up no doubt contributed to a nervy start at Bramall Lane on Sunday. The match swung in the visitors’ favour when United’s England youth international defender Issy Hobson, on loan from Everton, was shown a red card in the 34th minute for denying a clear goalscoring opportunity. Portsmouth capitalised in the second half as the former United captain Sophie Barker took advantage of a defensive mistake to open the scoring. The centre-back Riva Casley’s header from a set-piece doubled their lead.
Portsmouth know they still have work to do in order to survive. They also do not have a fixture on the final day of the season so face an excruciating wait to know their fate as they watch the action elsewhere from afar.
On Sunday their long-serving manager, Jay Sadler, was following the action from the gantry overhanging the dugouts, as he served a touchline ban. He was full of pride for his team afterwards, saying: “The celebrations in the changing rooms say it all. The players were superb. We played without fear. We played with real aggression, on the front foot to try and turn them over.
“I’m blessed that I work with great human beings. When we recruit, whether it be staff or players, it’s ‘human first, player/staff second’. We’ve had some heavy defeats, some defeats that have been close, and the group has kept persevering and kept going because we’ve got a belief about us and we’ve known we’ve got quality to get out of it.
“To get this football club into the Championship was phenomenal and now to stay here would mean everything. We know a win today was just one step forward, and we’re not over the bridge. We’re nowhere near the bridge. Now this game means nothing if we don’t back it up.”
Despite the scoreline, United could take heart from the sizeable turnout, and the growing enthusiasm for the team within the local area. Externally it has seemed as though there has been a dark cloud hanging over the club for the past 18 months, since the death of the team’s longest-serving player Maddy Cusack in 2023. A coroner’s inquest into the circumstances leading up to Cusack’s passing is scheduled for April. Compared to such devastating news, a game of football feels trivial.
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The eager faces of the youngsters in the stands offered a ray of light for the team in an otherwise dark time, and while the pre-match rendition of the club’s Greasy Chip Butty Song may not have been sung with particularly confidenceby those in attendance, the half-time DJ certainly got everybody into a mood that was at odds with the on-pitch nerves.
“It’s something we’re working hard at, off the pitch, to make this an experience not just for youngsters but for everyone who has come to the ground,” Thompson said afterwards. “It was a great crowd today and it means a lot to us to play in front of this kind of crowd and get more and more people from the local community here. It’s a new team with a lot of new faces.”
Thompson, who became United’s head coach in 2024, said he had “no real complaints” about Hobson’s sending-off, although he did feel his side could have had two penalties. “We need those moments to go for us, when you’re 10-v-11.” he said.
“We need to score more goals, that has been our achilles heel. Both boxes, really, is what’s hurting us because a lot of the times we’re coming away from games thinking our performance was positive, but the result and the scoreline doesn’t quite reflect that.
“The positive thing I’ve said to them [the players] is, today has reaffirmed to me that we’re not the weakest team in this league. That doesn’t mean you can just take anything for granted and it will just come to you.
“We’ve got five massive games left and our performances between Christmas and now have allowed us a bit of breathing room in that this game was bigger for them [Portsmouth] than it was for us. We have got that additional point on the board and a big goal-difference, so it is very much in our control. But we know we need to be a little bit more clinical, cut out the errors, and we’ll be able to achieve our objective of staying up.”
Source: theguardian.com
