I sometimes hit publish on these posts and instantly regret it, I question whether I’ve been too negative, too positive or just too damn reasonable. It’s tempting to follow up with a counterargument or another post trying to explain the first one.

I recently came across the idea of ‘stacked identities’. It’s prevalent in the social media age; a world where your views are pigeonholed. For example, if I think transgender women in women’s sport is quite a complicated subject that has yet to be fully resolved. My ‘stacked identity’ automatically aligns me to a myriad of other views that I don’t share. Likewise, I’m conscious that criticising our lack of ambition in games could see me labelled as universally negative towards the team and specifically Gary Rowett. 

That’s certainly been true in recent weeks, we always expected to be in some kind of relegation fight and vowed to enjoy it, but while that’s fine in the abstract, in the specific, a relegation fight is an ugly and frustrating thing to live through. It’s hard to be positive.

The club took the decision at Christmas that it wasn’t going to accept a ‘let’s just enjoy it’ narrative and hired Rowett in their image. I’m not wholly stacked in my cynicism towards his approach, but I do think he’s navigating a precariously narrow path to safety. With little risk, there’s little reward, his commitment to his process, from which there seems to be no divergence, seems to be a risk in itself. It’s a path to survival which is there to be trusted and never questioned.

Chris Wilder has never been one to simply trust the process; whether it was with us, Northampton or Sheffield United, he’s specialised in grabbing the process by the throat if he needs to. His view is that if the process is going wrong, fix it, if it’s going right, keep going, but moreso.

It’s a shame that we don’t have fonder memories of Wilder; he did extraordinary things for Oxford – we were a force of nature in our promotion season and monstrous in our derby wins over Swindon, his ability to steer momentum in our favour was second to none.

At Sheffield United, he’s built on that, there’s a recent episode of the Football Cliché’s Podcast which does a good 10-15 minutes on Wilder’s idiosyncrasies, particularly his idea of ‘doing a job’ on your opponents. It’s not that different to his Oxford days, the only difference is scale.

Wilder set out on Saturday to do a job on us; it’s easy for bigger clubs to come to the Kassam and feel it’s beneath them. When that happens, standards can slip and points get dropped. Wilder was more aware than most that was possible and set about to avoid it.

As everyone was preparing for kick-off, his whole squad trotted over to the North Stand in front of the away support and circled into a huddle. It was their Haka, a clear message that they were in control of both time and space. The referee looked on impotently, it was evident who was in charge and it wasn’t him.

Momentum seems too intangible to Gary Rowett, he wants us to live in the moment and deal with the here and now. But it’s naïve to think that intrusive thoughts and disruptive behaviours won’t seep in when results are going against you and there’s a barrage of unhinged emotional energy cascading unabated from the stands.

The huddle and their fans response heralded the arrival of Wilder’s alter-ego – his team. It could easily have crushed us before kick off. This week they announced their financial results revealing revenue of £134m and wages £64m, that’s sixteen times our income and six times our wage bill, they’re not like us and they wanted to show it.

But we opened fearlessly and found that they seemed to be a bit more human than we were expecting. They had their moments, Jamie Cumming making three remarkable stops including one reaction save with his feet that defied belief. But, as Mark Harris frustrated and Ole Romeny harried, it became clear that with conviction and application we could stem their momentum, puncture their ego and close the gap.

Wilder is an excellent Championship manager who has earned his right to a bigger budget, but he and Rowett are more similar than perhaps they’d like to admit. They’re not distracted by the theoreticians who dictate a proper way to play football. The approach seems to be if a system works, use it, if you have more resources to throw at it, then do the same, but more and bigger.

Rowett’s commitment to The Process means our attacking threat has become almost comically one-dimensional, Will Vaulks’ long throw is now unleashed from anywhere within our half with the sole aim of finding one of the big lads in the box. After a few sighters, in front of the baying away support, Vaulks caught one just right, landing it on Ben Nelson’s head. From the ensuing chaos Siriki Dembele brought the ball under control and steered it into the net.

Remembering our commitment to enjoying the struggle, we embraced the moment even though it came with a nagging doubt. We’d scored too early. even though we’d been playing 38 minutes. Experience told us that leads are just a prelude to another crippling defeat.

Over half-time a chastening wind swept through our collective consciousness. The competing forces of hope and realism converged to drain the world of colour, and introduce a cold chill and a deep fear. We knew that the lead was an apparition, an enigma, a phantom, it simply didn’t exist. Reality would soon expose that truth.

The players returned; it started to feel sacrificial and gladiatorial. We faced 45 minutes of torture and inevitable failure.

We steered through the bewitching moments after the restart in which were expected to succumb to their inevitable onslaught. Surviving that drove a wedge in our porous confidence and we started to build, pushing the shadowy curtain of doubt back. The more we committed, the more it moved. We weren’t overwhelming the league leaders, the financial disparities don’t allow that, but we were holding them; they may not have buckled but their grizzled vanity dissolved. 

A rhythm started to build, a thundering samba from the East, North and South stands. The visiting fans were frustrated and silenced, drowned out by the growing bedlam. There was a tempo to our rearguard, a collective investment and commitment, a connection was made, the players and fans together, building a wall of resistance. 

The time ticked by, Wilder introduced an array of talent; but they’d just become names, none could penetrate the wall. Eventually, their attacks lost heart and intensity; they came to dominate but none of their clubbing blows seemed to land. We’d broken them.

The final whistle brought us out of our trance-like state, what had happened was merely a statement of fact, how it happened was a mystery, we’d been too occupied, too engaged to truly understand it.

A crucial three points and the shock result we needed against the team we were least likely to achieve it against. Success is not always about blistering attacking football, it’s often about grit and commitment, and finding beauty is in its ugliness. Ironically, Chris Wilder taught us that, it’s not surprise that he was so magnanimous in defeat; we really did a job on him.