Are Wednesday Just Having Carlos Weeks?

As Wednesday are five games into the season and an indifferent start is paused for the September international break, Martin Wood looks at how August has been for the Owls.

Another truly Wednesday Week comes to a close. You know, a Wednesday Week; not the podcast, but a week with signs of hope from some good stuff happening, followed by the crash of the bad.

Or is it a Carlos Week?

Ultimately I don’t know, but what I do know is that battle lines seem to have been drawn: in one corner the ‘Carlos Out’ brigade, in the other the ‘Stop the Bloody Moaning and Get Behind the Team’ brigade.

For full disclosure my view, as stated before, is a that this manager has taken the team as far as he can. This comes from a sense the team is stagnating, that investment seems to add little to overall performance and that creativity in particular fails to thrive; we do good, we do bad, but we don’t seem to develop from either.

But. What I won’t do, will never do, is take some perverse joy from the team losing so it might somehow show me to be ‘right’ and a whole bunch of other people ‘wrong’. There’s no need for there to be egg on my face when we win, or on yours when we lose. Listening and reading comments following our games however, and it seems that with every result egg should be flying all over the place.

This is symptom of where the team are at the moment: there’s just no clear trajectory. While it’s that lack of forward trajectory that makes me feel the way I do, for others it’s a perfectly justifiable reason to wait and see: to give Carlos the time his previous achievements have earns him.

It’s weird time. No result seems to prove anything. When the team played like extras from Night of the Living Dead against Preston, nothing changed for me. When we came back against Sunderland then beat Fulham? The same. A shrug. A strong side 3-0 down to Bolton? ‘Yeah’ I think, ‘This team is totally capable of that’. Grabbing two late goals and threatening extra time? ‘Sure’ I say to myself ‘that could definitely happen.’

So maybe the battle lines are drawn. Maybe some of us are just more glass half empty than half full kind of people. Some of us more easily start being abusive than others. But taking pleasure from a win is the one thing that should unite us all, surely? Well, that and the fact that being abusive rarely if ever improves anything. As I say, battle lines may be drawn, but let’s keep it civil.