Off The Post Blog: How do you define success in the modern football era?

Everyone now looks to the Premier League and its equivalent across Europe and arguably to a lesser extent across the world to measure just how a big a triumph their footballing achievements are. Most of the teams in the Champions League are no longer Champions of their nation and yet the FA Cup’s worth is diluted… Anyway I digress.

This season has been a positive one for Sheffield Wednesday. The team has gone from almost perennial Championship strugglers and some ‘experts’ favourite for the drop back into League One to bona fide Premier League promotion contenders.

However, while the fans dream of what may happen at the end of the season Wednesday’s rise into the top five has gone relatively unnoticed until recently. Carlos Carvalhal’s team have just kept plugging away, picking up points and quietly going about their business while all the talk seems to revolve around Burnley, Hull City, Middlesbrough and the managerial roundabout at the iPro Stadium in Derby.

Some may wonder and even be aghast at how the Owls seem to only be mentioned in dispatches but it sort of fits into the ethic at the club itself too. Right from day one of the season all the talk has been about taking one game at a time - an often-used cliché in football and it seems to relate to things when a potential achievement is around the corner. At Hillsborough though it has become somewhat of a mantra, right from the first ball being kicked in the sunshine in August 2015 when Bristol City were swept aside with our new look team and footballing plan.

But why have Wednesday never really been taken too seriously? Maybe, it was down to an almost new squad and constant nods to squad rotation not being a viable option for success, a head coach previously unknown to English football and football fans alike; or was it the years in the doldrums that left too much of a negative legacy amongst those in the game?

Speaking to some fans of the club last summer, the main hope was a step forward. Improve on what went before, even if it was steady progress, with just a hint of evidence that the club is going in the right direction. We’re now a minimum of 15 games away from bringing the season to a close, sitting in fifth place in the second tier of English football and at the time of writing within a couple of wins of the top two sides in the division. Not forgetting that the team are putting together some of the best performances seen in our half of Sheffield for possibly decades. It’s not been steady progress it’s been a leap in the right direction.

Right now, the supporters are happy with things on the field. That’s where everything starts and stops. It’s why we attend games, it’s where the affinity for football comes from, the passion, having committed players who match our commitment and desire for success.

Our definition of success would seem small to the likes of Arsenal, Chelsea, Manchester United and Liverpool. Challenging amongst the biggest clubs in the country is a speck on the horizon for Sheffield Wednesday, but it’s something that is visible, maybe even almost tangible.

But let’s not run before we can walk….After all… We mustn’t forget. Our most important game of this season is this Saturday against Preston.

Then we’ll see what happens next week!