For Sheffield United and company, the Premier League brings with it a unique brew of misery | Sheffield United

And you will ask yourself: how do I work this?

And you will wonder: what happened to that three-man midfield?

And you will say to yourself: this is not my nice club.

And you will say to yourself: this is not my pretty league.

And you may find yourself: with 16 points.

And you may find yourself: being harassed by assistant referees. eating sandwiches.

It's the same as always. Yes, it's time for one of English football's familiar spring rituals: arguing whether (the Premier League's bottom club) is the “worst Premier League team of all time”. This season the light of the torches has fallen on the poor and fragile Sheffield United, who could be relegated this weekend if the results do not favor him. And if we have learned anything in the last eight months, it is that “the results are against them” has been the only reliable defining note of United's season, a rock to cling to in times of uncertainty.

Saturdays 4-1 home defeat against Burnley It felt like a turning point in this sense: not so much a tearing down of tools as the realization that there are no tools, that the very existence of the tools may have been a trick of memory. Remarkably, it was the first time Sheffield United had conceded four goals in a match all season; Yes, that is, you were willing to ignore 8-0, 6-0 and the four 5-0. The next goal they concede will put them level with the infamous Derby County team of 2007-08, a team still regarded as the Rosetta Stone of Premier League atrocity, the seminal text by which all future suitors are judged. .

Even with the worst will in the world, Sheffield United aren't that bad. In fact, for all their defensive weaknesses – a curious preference for letting corners bounce first before clearing them (you know, just in case) – they're actually a pretty capable team on the ball: full of artistry and invention, quick bursts and late goals. Transfer this team to, say, the 1993-94 Carling Premiership and they would be greeted as a superior alien life form: relentlessly fit, technically on a different plane, probably winning the league by eight points. Ben Brereton Díaz would be a candidate for the Golden Boot. Gustavo Hamer would be signed by a Serie A giant in a few months. Ivo Grbic, to be fair, could still struggle.

Not that this is really much consolation to fans of the 2023-24 iteration, who still pack Bramall Lane every week, bracing themselves for another afternoon of impotent rage. Condemned first division Clubs seem to possess their own unique mix of misery, quite distinct from other forms of football bitterness: the condescension and the memes, the inevitability of that first goal, the faint bitterness of a once-cherished dream.

Because this was supposed to be the promised land, right? From the foothills of the Championship, the Premier League rises like a kind of sporting Solaris: a tantalizing glow in the sky made of strange textures and substances that you long to touch. Riches without measure. The cemetery stand at the match of the day. The best agents in the world making their way to your sports director. Mohamed Salah warming up his grass, stripping his dressing room, wincing in pain at his cold showers.

Of course, when reality hits, it's a little different than the brochures. Take Nottingham Forest for example. How are you doing right now in the promised land? Of all the newly promoted clubs, it is Forest who lived the Premier League dream the most vicariously: loudly blaspheming their ambitions, signing dozens of fun players and completely remaking themselves. Turns out, none of which seems to have made them even remotely happy. While their fans are furious about the latest tranche of ticket price increases, and Nuno Espírito Santo is furious with the referees, the club's official statements are furious about mysterious conspiracies, unspoken corruptions, a deep state that somehow includes the city of Luton.

But in the modern Premier League it's not just finances that are unequally divided, it's also happiness. Of course, the championship can also be soul-destroying in its own way. But at least it's more of a blank slate, where big teams can fail and small teams can still thrive. I know some Ipswich fans and I now spend a lot of my time trying to convince them that this, right here, is the good stuff. With a team they adore and a league they destroy and a coach who is theirs and only theirs.

Not the grim struggle that comes after: desperately begging the big clubs for players on loan, the cliff to 35 points, the hours spent waiting for VAR decisions, the 21% possession against Manchester City, the elite tactical fouls. Getting beaten 2-0 at home and feeling strangely grateful. Chris Sutton suddenly decides to have an opinion about you. Be rinsed by agents. Being defeated by literal nation states. For teams at the bottom of the food chain, the Premier League has come to resemble an abusive relationship.

In retrospect, it is increasingly clear that the six Super League clubs should probably have been allowed to leave: allowed to join their dirty, half-baked break with their fantasy economy, leaving the rest of the pyramid alone. The new regulator has the power to rebuild the finances of the football championship, to discourage impatient owners from building entire business models out of debt and pipe dreams. In the meantime, perhaps fans should stop seeing the Premier League as a form of salvation. For clubs like Sheffield United, moaning and cursing, relegation need not feel like a trapdoor. Perhaps, from a certain point of view, it may even seem like an escape hatch to freedom.

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