Few things drive a professional sportsperson on more than defeat and disappointment. Yorkshire’s Football League clubs should have plenty of fuel for the fire this season.
With no Premier League representation for the first time since 2016, there are 11 of them in 2023-24, and all but Sheffield Wednesday and Harrogate Town kick off licking their wounds.
But this weekend is the first of a new campaign and most if not all will have high hopes of competing for promotion.
Hull City, Middlesbrough and Bradford City came very close to their play-offs. The latter pair pushed extremely hard, just too late, giving confidence to stand by their managers and the foundations laid.
Hull aim to go in a radical new direction under Tim Walter’s adventurous football. Signings have been slow in coming but are starting to.
No one came closer to promotion last season than Leeds, beaten by a more clinical Southampton in the play-off final. They host Portsmouth today as the popular tip for the title despite losing Crysencio Summerville and Archie Gray.
“When you come so close you have to take this as fuel and even more motivation to keep going in the next time of asking,” argues manager Daniel Farke.
“It makes no sense right now to dwell on it. When there is a setback, even if you perhaps don’t deserve it, it’s important you invest more, work more consistently, more concentrated, more focused and even harder.”
Middlesbrough should push Leeds hard after a summer of fine-tuning, and Michael Carrick will have learnt a lot from a first full season in management. Swansea City will be first to test their credentials at the Riverside in today’s 12.30pm Championship game.
The Blades, Millers and Tigers have all reset, although only Rotherham’s overhaul feels on track for the new season. The returning Steve Evans knows League One and has signed players who do too.
The only problem is, it is full of former Premier League teams and promoted clubs with ambitions as big as their budgets. Birmingham City alone are reckoned to have spent around £12m on transfer fees this summer.
But Rotherham’s last three League One seasons ended in promotions whilst bigger fish floundered.
“We’ve all watched the Olympics with real interest and I’m not aware of all the athletes around the world but I pay attention when I hear the commentators say things like, ‘This guy broke the world record last year’, ‘This guy’s a gold medal winner’, ‘This guy’s the current world champion’,” said Evans.
“We’ve got players with promotions from League One and sometimes that can become something that happens for you as much as you make it happen.”
All 11 know no matter the disappointments, their fans will still be behind them.
Evans speaks for them all by saying: “We have a support that sticks with their team through thick and thin. After the failure last season, the supporters are still there. They just needed some encouragement.”
Wednesday finished last season wonderfully – in play-off form from December – but giving up a huge headstart meant success for them was avoiding relegation. Now with possibly the best manager in the division – and arguably the likes of Marcelo Bielsa, Chris Wilder and David Wagner showed that to be more useful in the Championship than the best players – Danny Rohl has been backed to kick on.
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