The team lie anchored to the bottom with one point from a possible 18. Attendances are falling from a base that was already a concern. The latest accounts show the club's wage bill alone is over stg£13 million a year. The financial state is such that the £250,000 needed to fund the purchase of Carlton Palmer from Nottingham Forest this week could not be found. The most talented player seems more intent on upsetting his colleagues than fighting for a jersey. Welcome to Sheffield Wednesday.
Given the circumstances, on entering Danny Wilson's office on Thursday one half expected to see the manager with his head in his hands, a half-finished bottle of whisky on the desk and an ashtray full of the fag ends of exasperation. A dartboard with Benito Carbone's picture on it would have been an understandable feature too. Sympathy would have been offered.
But there was no need; 14 months after his appointment as Ron Atkinson's successor at Hillsborough, Wilson is displaying the muscular stability he brought to the pitch as a roaming midfielder. He was the neatest of hunter-gatherers then and there is a self-sufficiency about his management; first at Barnsley, where he was able to distance himself from the distracting romance of their season in the Premiership despite being its orchestrator, and now at Wednesday, where he appears at home even if five defeats have left him looking vulnerable.
"You've got to keep things in perspective," Wilson said. "A lot of people ebb and flow; I don't. I consciously try to not let things get out of proportion, to keep an even attitude. I think we're only five to 10 per cent away from turning a 1-0 loss into a 1-0 win. You don't start pushing panic buttons after five or six games."
Then, aware that Ruud Gullit departed after five games, he added: "Well, I don't." Chairmen are a different breed. Since Wilson's appointment in July last year, Leeds, Liverpool, Tottenham, Newcastle and Wimbledon have all changed their managers. Walter Smith, who brings Everton to Hillsborough today, got his job five days before Wilson. Over a third of Premiership clubs have a manager who has served one season or less with them.
Ever greater expectations is Wilson's explanation. "Here they are much higher this season because we finished 12th last season, although again we haven't spent a lot of money. We can't; we haven't got it. The more people understand that, the less pressure is put on us."
On the whole Wilson thinks Wednesday's fans have been "very, very patient" considering the league position and the Paolo di Canio and Carbone sagas. But he is also concerned about the lack of numbers coming through the turnstiles. Last September under 28,000 turned up to watch Wednesday beat Arsenal and though more than 34,000 watched the opening-day defeat to Liverpool, by the third home match, against Derby, 14,000 of them stayed away. Today's figure will be examined anxiously.
With Sheffield United down the road struggling to fill Bramall Lane, inevitably unification has been mentioned. Wilson thinks it will never happen because Sheffield is "a two-heart city" but he also said the initial reaction to the idea was "knee-jerk. The way you look at it now, there'd be an argument for amalgamation, of course there would. I don't think for a minute they would contemplate it but there may come a situation when one club may go under or is getting too far away from the other. It would be common sense."
Aged 39, 22 years after making his professional debut for Bury, Wilson knows that common sense and football are not exactly live-in lovers. Carbone and his mirror might be, though, and even Wilson's formidable calm was disturbed by the Italian's behaviour at Southampton a fortnight ago. On hearing he was a substitute Carbone huffed out of the Dell and left in a taxi to Gatwick Airport. He is back in Sheffield but there has been no apology to Wilson or the other players.
"I find that hard to understand. I think he knows he's made a mistake but he hasn't said anything to me yet or to any of the lads. Is he committed to us or not? I've got to question that. At this moment I'm not too sure. You try to calm down the situation by not saying anything to the papers but, because sometimes you don't say anything, the supporters think everything is OK." Clearly it is not.
"I have to state that this football club has been as compassionate and understanding as it could have possibly been. We've had our arms around people, we've done this, we've done that and I think it's time for a bit of payback."
Finally he said wearily: "The whole incident's been a pain in the arse." Then calm returned to Danny Wilson. But Carbone may not return to the team, although given that this is the last year of his contract and he can talk to whomever in January, presumably he is not much bothered. Wilson, meanwhile, has to concentrate on those who will remain. And for that to happen he must be one of them.
