bricktop
Well-Known Member
As I sit here writing this and thinking about what to write about what has been a magnificent season where we have not only met the target of promotion, but have surpassed all targets and now rightfully and deservedly find ourselves a Championship club once again after spending too long in the wilderness and hinterland of the third tier of English football, I find myself thinking of how do a write this seasons review objectively and without eulogising too much about a Sheffield United team that has not only entertained, but has also completely and totally surpassed anything we could have reasonably expected from this season.
I think it is only right and just to begin the story of the season that has just been, where the previous season ended in utter humiliation. On a warm and pleasant Sunday afternoon we had been outplayed and outfought by a workmanlike Scunthorpe United side, and that was as good as it got at that moment in time. The players had been publicly shamed by a ‘lap of appreciation’, where 500 or so who stayed behind to witness this, ended up staying to let the underperforming players know what they thought of them. The manager Nigel Adkins who had stoically remained positive all season despite it being abundantly clear that all was not well at Bramall Lane, had seemingly signed his own death warrant with an out of character outburst where he blamed the fans for not behind the team, citing things at Bramall Lane was the same as they will always be, although in that interview he did have the distinct air of a dead man walking. Things at boardroom level appeared to be just as convoluted and disjointed as ever. Kevin McCabe had been back from Belgium a few times but still appeared to all intents and purposes a bit of an absentee owner, which in comparison to the even more absentee Prince Abdullah made him look very much hands on. Jim Phipps had gone, Mal Brannigan had gone, and they had been replaced by what seemingly appeared to be another faceless executive to come in, make business decisions and little else.
The squad we had was disjointed and it was visible to any onlooker that this wasn’t a squad that was pulling together in the same direction. You had the signings of two or three managers in situ, and you could tell a mile off which player was part of which faction, you had half the squad who was no better than a gang of immature children, you had players who were only here for one last payday, then a group of honest but limited journeyman and each to a man was a squad of players who weren’t clearly fit for purpose. The squad was an absolute shamble, and the relationship between the players and fans was at an all-time low. Quite clearly the players collectively didn’t have much pride in the shirt, or great desire to represent Sheffield United with one or two isolated exceptions.
The fan base wasn’t happy either, although for the time being was still remained loyal, and to their great credit, was still attending in numbers that was unprecedented for a side who had spent this long at this level, although the atmosphere amongst the supporters had become increasingly hostile, quite often with supporters arguing amongst themselves about where the blame should lie for the shambles that Sheffield United had turned in to. Players, Managers and Boardroom players, all culpable to varying degrees. The sense of anger and resentment towards the different factions in the club increased by the resurgence across the city where Wednesday looked Premiership bound, and it looked increasingly like we has in for a longer spell that we feared as the second team in the city.
Quite clearly it became perfectly clear that Nigel Adkins was a dead man walking, he had come in a year earlier with a very impressive track record of success at Scunthorpe and Southampton, and was viewed as the man with the nous and experience to get us out of this Division, although he had a poor spell at Reading as an aberration on his managerial career. The 2015-16 season had been an unmitigated disaster, as the relentless positivity he exuded at all time, didn’t transmit itself to results on the pitch, and the same positivity that was initially like a breath of fresh air at the very beginning, soon became cliched and tiring, as we wanted answers to our problems and those answered never came from the soundbites, and although he did enjoy an extended period of grace and time to remedy our ills, that was perhaps a little longer than some of the previous incumbents of the managerial hot seat of Bramall Lane enjoyed, and by the end of the season he had lost the support of the fans, players and it was clear the board as well, and his dismissal wasn’t contentious, but more akin to an act of euthanasia.
At that point I don’t think there could have been any doubt who the leading candidate as the next manager of Sheffield United would be. Our former right-back, born and bred Sheffield United fan, and member of the Dave Bassett side that brought glory and two promotions to the Lane, Chris Wilder. His managerial career up until that point had been slow and steady. Schooled at Alfreton and Halifax Town in non-league where at the later he performed admirably despite managing at a club who was in great financial difficulty. He had managed expectations to bring Oxford United back in to the League, before enjoying a season of stunning success at Northampton Town where against a back drop of financial trouble he steered them to a stunning League Two Championship. Wilder appeared to be the logical choice, in fact probably the only real option we had, and Kevin McCabe having wielded the act with Adkins, acted swiftly and decisively to bring Wilder home.
When he came in, he made his first statement almost immediately by handing the captaincy over to Billy Sharp, a move that possibly surprised a few people, but as Sharp had been one of the few players to emerge from the previous season with a bit of remaining credibility, and appeared to be a bit of a talismanic figure, and was one of the few players you could tell still cared. Wilder brought in his sidekick Alan Knill to work alongside him, and alluded that him and Knill was a management team rather than a manager and assistant, and he began work by clearing the decks of all the backroom staff that had remained at the Lane.
In the early days of Chris Wilder, after his appointment it all went a little bit quiet. The close season had started but quietly and effectively started work on Day One, whilst the players went away on holiday, and the football world slowly began shutting down, Wilder was microscopically evaluating his squad, appraising transfer targets and working on his first real of statement of intent, and that was delivered to great effect with a short worded statement containing the details of the released list. 10 players effectively told they wasn’t going to get their contract renewed, another 10 transfer listed, and then it was finished with great aplomb with a short note stating that although Dean Hammond had activated a clause in his contract entitling him to an extra year, he was getting transfer listed. I don’t think anyone could have argued against anything contained in that list, but crucially and cleverly there was also an invitation in that transfer list for any players who wasn’t subject to any offers to come back pre-season and to be given a chance. A risky strategy that was to produce some stunning success.
Having effectively given himself a blank canvas to work with, Wilder began to go out and look for the players he wanted in, but he didn’t go out and replicate the mistakes of previous managers by bringing in big players on big wages, instead his signings came in without fanfare and was often underwhelming. The first two was the Bury defender Chris Hussey and Burton winger Mark Duffy. The followed a reserve Centre-Half from Brentford in Jack O’Connell, Oldham defender James Wilson, Coventry City midfielder John Fleck who might have come in 5 years earlier if it wasn’t for a malfunctioning fax machine, and then thirty something Oxford defender Jake Wright who had never played above the level below us. The final pre-season signing came with the arrival of former Wednesday striker from Bury after some protracted negotiations.
With the pre-season out of the way, it was now time to get the season underway on a sunny day at the highly-fancied Bolton. Wilder fielded a much changed side from the team that finished the season in disarray and disgrace against Scunthorpe with five new debutants, and the new season started brightly as United dominated the first half an hour, playing some great hi-tempo football, but as with many things to do with United it was a bright start that quickly saw us coming down to earth with a Jay Spearing wonder strike to give Bolton the lead and then we struggled to get back in to the game and left Lancashire beaten, the following Tuesday saw United unceremoniously dumped out of the League Cup in extra time by Crewe after a disappointing performance, which was then followed by another poor performance and a fortunate point against a decent Rochdale side, it was quickly becoming clear there was much work to be done. United then entertained a Southend United side in a third consecutive home fixture, in a game that was imperative that we took the points from if we were going to be credible contenders for promotion, true to form United found themselves down by three goals within the first half hour as the defence turned in a collective horror show, and then the following Saturday we found ourselves anchored at the foot of the table after a late penalty saw us defeated at Millwall. If the David Weir era had been awful, this was shaping up just as bad if not worse. The fans were already dispirited and restless, the players were struggling, questions had already been asked of Chris Wilder and the board, well they were non-existent, as this new Sheffield United looked if anything worse than the preceding editions of Sheffield United, with less than a month gone of the new season it was quickly this was going to be a memorable season, albeit for what appeared not to be the right reasons.
It was at this point it was already clear that action needed to be taken, and quickly if we had any chance of arresting the slide and start getting some points, the football had been poor, the side looked low on confidence and a few of the players were still clearly underperforming, but how to stop the slide, the buck had to stop with one man, and the man who chose to stop the book was Chris Wilder who quickly began to address some of the deficiencies that had quickly became visible to all. With the transfer window beginning to end, there was action. We brought in young midfielder Harry Chapman in on a loan, after the Southend debacle it was clear that George Long was struggling, partially through a lack of confidence and needed to be taken away from first team action, which saw United signing young Cardiff City goalkeeper Simon Moore. Transfer deadline day saw the arrivals of full backs Ethan Ebanks-Landell and Danny Lafferty from Wolves and Burnley respectively, these new arrivals partially funded by the sales of Che Adams who thought he was ready to move to a bigger club in the guise of Birmingham City to further his career, young United forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin departed for Everton and the biggest move was the departure on loan of John Brayford, whom Chris Wilder had clearly not taken a liking to, and found himself ruthlessly moved on without ceremony to Burton Albion and former United boss Nigel Clough who he clearly enjoyed a great relationship with. We also saw the loan departures of promising young striker Marc McNulty and the forgotten man Kieron Wallace.
In and amongst all the transfer movement United faced Wilders old club Oxford United in the 5th match of the season, a season that was quickly going away from us, and once again we found ourselves a goal down at the break, but United came out for that second half determined to get something from the game, we wasn’t the better team, all we did was fight that bit harder and a scrappy Billy Sharp goal saw us get back in the game, and a James Wilson header got our noses in front and we had to fight tooth and nail to finally get our first win of the season on the board. This was followed up with a second half comeback at one of our perennial bogey teams Gillingham where the win was sealed deep in to injury team thanks to a Billy Sharp penalty. We made it 3 straight wins with a solid win at AFC Wimbledon, which also saw us move in to the top half of the table, and further progress came with a win at home to Peterborough thanks to a early Matty Done goal.
With those early games, there had been a bit of a change, not a huge change but subtle changes as United began to quickly bed in with the new signings beginning to adapt to a new 3-5-2 formation, Billy Sharp had begun to show a bit of form, Kieron Freeman had begun to show that he was the player than he had showed us glimpses that he could be. Simon Moore looked to be a big upgrade on George Long as he looked solid and assured between the sticks, whilst the loan players Ebanks-Landell and Danny Lafferty relished the opportunity of first team football. It wasn’t a seismic shift, but to use some political analogy, it certainly looked like the green shoots of recovery had started to sprout.
We faced a stiff test at a high-flying Scunthorpe United who had already begun to put some distance between themselves and the chasing pack at the top of the table and ended up coming away with a 2-2 draw in a topsy-turvy clash than saw Chris Basham sent off in what would be our only sending off of the season, and our point secured thanks to a late Billy Sharp penalty. A first goal for Harry Chapman saw us see off a good Bristol Rovers side on a Tuesday night at the Lane, a late late Ethan Ebanks-Landell header saw us snatch a point at Fleetwood, the same player cementing his burgeoning reputation as our new cult hero with two first half goals against Port Vale where ran out clear 4-0 winners in an excellent performance that was rightly lauded as our best league performance for quite a while, and a win that also saw us move in to the play-off spots.
After 8 games unbeaten where I felt we hadn’t looked brilliant at times, but we had won a lot of points through battling it out, we somehow had managed to put the poor start to the season to bed, and clambered from 24th up to 6th in the table and now our sights had quickly become set on the top half of the table. Another win came at a Shrewsbury side struggling in the lower reaches of the table where United cantered to a 3-0 win, and that was followed by tough assignment at Bradford where we came away with a point after a real humdinger of a 3-3 draw, where the Bradford manager Stuart McCall correctly asserted that whoever finished above Sheffield United would get promoted.
The run continued, we beat MK Dons 2-1, then we saw FA Cup action with an easy 6-0 win, and a debut Harry Chapman hat-trick over an awful Leyton Orient side who would end the season falling out the league comfortably hammered a mediocre Chesterfield containing former United striker Ched Evans side 4-1 away, with an excellent second half performance after Evans had been the star of the show and the Spireites had gone in a goal up at half time, and then on the 19th of November, 12 weeks after being the relegation zone United moved in to an automatic promotion spot after beating Shrewsbury 2-1 in a game where had been utterly dominant in the first half but struggled in the second half after Shrewsbury had 2 men sent off.
The Blades then struggled to break down a Bury side who had come to Bramall Lane to defend and snatch a point with United utterly dominating the play but somehow being unable to break the Lancashire side down until an injury time goal from the new cult hero Ethan Ebanks-Landell sending the Lane in to a frenzy. It was clear at that point this was a team giving its all, but also a team with the happy knack that a lot of teams who get promoted show in scoring late winners, a trend that would continue throughout the season. However, that trend was to be broken in the following game as United in from a huge travelling supported saw a win snatched from our grasp thanks to a late, late Charlton goal, and then our 16 match unbeaten run came to an end with a 1-0 defeat at home to Walsall in a game that we would have won on a different day.
I think it is only right and just to begin the story of the season that has just been, where the previous season ended in utter humiliation. On a warm and pleasant Sunday afternoon we had been outplayed and outfought by a workmanlike Scunthorpe United side, and that was as good as it got at that moment in time. The players had been publicly shamed by a ‘lap of appreciation’, where 500 or so who stayed behind to witness this, ended up staying to let the underperforming players know what they thought of them. The manager Nigel Adkins who had stoically remained positive all season despite it being abundantly clear that all was not well at Bramall Lane, had seemingly signed his own death warrant with an out of character outburst where he blamed the fans for not behind the team, citing things at Bramall Lane was the same as they will always be, although in that interview he did have the distinct air of a dead man walking. Things at boardroom level appeared to be just as convoluted and disjointed as ever. Kevin McCabe had been back from Belgium a few times but still appeared to all intents and purposes a bit of an absentee owner, which in comparison to the even more absentee Prince Abdullah made him look very much hands on. Jim Phipps had gone, Mal Brannigan had gone, and they had been replaced by what seemingly appeared to be another faceless executive to come in, make business decisions and little else.
The squad we had was disjointed and it was visible to any onlooker that this wasn’t a squad that was pulling together in the same direction. You had the signings of two or three managers in situ, and you could tell a mile off which player was part of which faction, you had half the squad who was no better than a gang of immature children, you had players who were only here for one last payday, then a group of honest but limited journeyman and each to a man was a squad of players who weren’t clearly fit for purpose. The squad was an absolute shamble, and the relationship between the players and fans was at an all-time low. Quite clearly the players collectively didn’t have much pride in the shirt, or great desire to represent Sheffield United with one or two isolated exceptions.
The fan base wasn’t happy either, although for the time being was still remained loyal, and to their great credit, was still attending in numbers that was unprecedented for a side who had spent this long at this level, although the atmosphere amongst the supporters had become increasingly hostile, quite often with supporters arguing amongst themselves about where the blame should lie for the shambles that Sheffield United had turned in to. Players, Managers and Boardroom players, all culpable to varying degrees. The sense of anger and resentment towards the different factions in the club increased by the resurgence across the city where Wednesday looked Premiership bound, and it looked increasingly like we has in for a longer spell that we feared as the second team in the city.
Quite clearly it became perfectly clear that Nigel Adkins was a dead man walking, he had come in a year earlier with a very impressive track record of success at Scunthorpe and Southampton, and was viewed as the man with the nous and experience to get us out of this Division, although he had a poor spell at Reading as an aberration on his managerial career. The 2015-16 season had been an unmitigated disaster, as the relentless positivity he exuded at all time, didn’t transmit itself to results on the pitch, and the same positivity that was initially like a breath of fresh air at the very beginning, soon became cliched and tiring, as we wanted answers to our problems and those answered never came from the soundbites, and although he did enjoy an extended period of grace and time to remedy our ills, that was perhaps a little longer than some of the previous incumbents of the managerial hot seat of Bramall Lane enjoyed, and by the end of the season he had lost the support of the fans, players and it was clear the board as well, and his dismissal wasn’t contentious, but more akin to an act of euthanasia.
At that point I don’t think there could have been any doubt who the leading candidate as the next manager of Sheffield United would be. Our former right-back, born and bred Sheffield United fan, and member of the Dave Bassett side that brought glory and two promotions to the Lane, Chris Wilder. His managerial career up until that point had been slow and steady. Schooled at Alfreton and Halifax Town in non-league where at the later he performed admirably despite managing at a club who was in great financial difficulty. He had managed expectations to bring Oxford United back in to the League, before enjoying a season of stunning success at Northampton Town where against a back drop of financial trouble he steered them to a stunning League Two Championship. Wilder appeared to be the logical choice, in fact probably the only real option we had, and Kevin McCabe having wielded the act with Adkins, acted swiftly and decisively to bring Wilder home.
When he came in, he made his first statement almost immediately by handing the captaincy over to Billy Sharp, a move that possibly surprised a few people, but as Sharp had been one of the few players to emerge from the previous season with a bit of remaining credibility, and appeared to be a bit of a talismanic figure, and was one of the few players you could tell still cared. Wilder brought in his sidekick Alan Knill to work alongside him, and alluded that him and Knill was a management team rather than a manager and assistant, and he began work by clearing the decks of all the backroom staff that had remained at the Lane.
In the early days of Chris Wilder, after his appointment it all went a little bit quiet. The close season had started but quietly and effectively started work on Day One, whilst the players went away on holiday, and the football world slowly began shutting down, Wilder was microscopically evaluating his squad, appraising transfer targets and working on his first real of statement of intent, and that was delivered to great effect with a short worded statement containing the details of the released list. 10 players effectively told they wasn’t going to get their contract renewed, another 10 transfer listed, and then it was finished with great aplomb with a short note stating that although Dean Hammond had activated a clause in his contract entitling him to an extra year, he was getting transfer listed. I don’t think anyone could have argued against anything contained in that list, but crucially and cleverly there was also an invitation in that transfer list for any players who wasn’t subject to any offers to come back pre-season and to be given a chance. A risky strategy that was to produce some stunning success.
Having effectively given himself a blank canvas to work with, Wilder began to go out and look for the players he wanted in, but he didn’t go out and replicate the mistakes of previous managers by bringing in big players on big wages, instead his signings came in without fanfare and was often underwhelming. The first two was the Bury defender Chris Hussey and Burton winger Mark Duffy. The followed a reserve Centre-Half from Brentford in Jack O’Connell, Oldham defender James Wilson, Coventry City midfielder John Fleck who might have come in 5 years earlier if it wasn’t for a malfunctioning fax machine, and then thirty something Oxford defender Jake Wright who had never played above the level below us. The final pre-season signing came with the arrival of former Wednesday striker from Bury after some protracted negotiations.
With the pre-season out of the way, it was now time to get the season underway on a sunny day at the highly-fancied Bolton. Wilder fielded a much changed side from the team that finished the season in disarray and disgrace against Scunthorpe with five new debutants, and the new season started brightly as United dominated the first half an hour, playing some great hi-tempo football, but as with many things to do with United it was a bright start that quickly saw us coming down to earth with a Jay Spearing wonder strike to give Bolton the lead and then we struggled to get back in to the game and left Lancashire beaten, the following Tuesday saw United unceremoniously dumped out of the League Cup in extra time by Crewe after a disappointing performance, which was then followed by another poor performance and a fortunate point against a decent Rochdale side, it was quickly becoming clear there was much work to be done. United then entertained a Southend United side in a third consecutive home fixture, in a game that was imperative that we took the points from if we were going to be credible contenders for promotion, true to form United found themselves down by three goals within the first half hour as the defence turned in a collective horror show, and then the following Saturday we found ourselves anchored at the foot of the table after a late penalty saw us defeated at Millwall. If the David Weir era had been awful, this was shaping up just as bad if not worse. The fans were already dispirited and restless, the players were struggling, questions had already been asked of Chris Wilder and the board, well they were non-existent, as this new Sheffield United looked if anything worse than the preceding editions of Sheffield United, with less than a month gone of the new season it was quickly this was going to be a memorable season, albeit for what appeared not to be the right reasons.
It was at this point it was already clear that action needed to be taken, and quickly if we had any chance of arresting the slide and start getting some points, the football had been poor, the side looked low on confidence and a few of the players were still clearly underperforming, but how to stop the slide, the buck had to stop with one man, and the man who chose to stop the book was Chris Wilder who quickly began to address some of the deficiencies that had quickly became visible to all. With the transfer window beginning to end, there was action. We brought in young midfielder Harry Chapman in on a loan, after the Southend debacle it was clear that George Long was struggling, partially through a lack of confidence and needed to be taken away from first team action, which saw United signing young Cardiff City goalkeeper Simon Moore. Transfer deadline day saw the arrivals of full backs Ethan Ebanks-Landell and Danny Lafferty from Wolves and Burnley respectively, these new arrivals partially funded by the sales of Che Adams who thought he was ready to move to a bigger club in the guise of Birmingham City to further his career, young United forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin departed for Everton and the biggest move was the departure on loan of John Brayford, whom Chris Wilder had clearly not taken a liking to, and found himself ruthlessly moved on without ceremony to Burton Albion and former United boss Nigel Clough who he clearly enjoyed a great relationship with. We also saw the loan departures of promising young striker Marc McNulty and the forgotten man Kieron Wallace.
In and amongst all the transfer movement United faced Wilders old club Oxford United in the 5th match of the season, a season that was quickly going away from us, and once again we found ourselves a goal down at the break, but United came out for that second half determined to get something from the game, we wasn’t the better team, all we did was fight that bit harder and a scrappy Billy Sharp goal saw us get back in the game, and a James Wilson header got our noses in front and we had to fight tooth and nail to finally get our first win of the season on the board. This was followed up with a second half comeback at one of our perennial bogey teams Gillingham where the win was sealed deep in to injury team thanks to a Billy Sharp penalty. We made it 3 straight wins with a solid win at AFC Wimbledon, which also saw us move in to the top half of the table, and further progress came with a win at home to Peterborough thanks to a early Matty Done goal.
With those early games, there had been a bit of a change, not a huge change but subtle changes as United began to quickly bed in with the new signings beginning to adapt to a new 3-5-2 formation, Billy Sharp had begun to show a bit of form, Kieron Freeman had begun to show that he was the player than he had showed us glimpses that he could be. Simon Moore looked to be a big upgrade on George Long as he looked solid and assured between the sticks, whilst the loan players Ebanks-Landell and Danny Lafferty relished the opportunity of first team football. It wasn’t a seismic shift, but to use some political analogy, it certainly looked like the green shoots of recovery had started to sprout.
We faced a stiff test at a high-flying Scunthorpe United who had already begun to put some distance between themselves and the chasing pack at the top of the table and ended up coming away with a 2-2 draw in a topsy-turvy clash than saw Chris Basham sent off in what would be our only sending off of the season, and our point secured thanks to a late Billy Sharp penalty. A first goal for Harry Chapman saw us see off a good Bristol Rovers side on a Tuesday night at the Lane, a late late Ethan Ebanks-Landell header saw us snatch a point at Fleetwood, the same player cementing his burgeoning reputation as our new cult hero with two first half goals against Port Vale where ran out clear 4-0 winners in an excellent performance that was rightly lauded as our best league performance for quite a while, and a win that also saw us move in to the play-off spots.
After 8 games unbeaten where I felt we hadn’t looked brilliant at times, but we had won a lot of points through battling it out, we somehow had managed to put the poor start to the season to bed, and clambered from 24th up to 6th in the table and now our sights had quickly become set on the top half of the table. Another win came at a Shrewsbury side struggling in the lower reaches of the table where United cantered to a 3-0 win, and that was followed by tough assignment at Bradford where we came away with a point after a real humdinger of a 3-3 draw, where the Bradford manager Stuart McCall correctly asserted that whoever finished above Sheffield United would get promoted.
The run continued, we beat MK Dons 2-1, then we saw FA Cup action with an easy 6-0 win, and a debut Harry Chapman hat-trick over an awful Leyton Orient side who would end the season falling out the league comfortably hammered a mediocre Chesterfield containing former United striker Ched Evans side 4-1 away, with an excellent second half performance after Evans had been the star of the show and the Spireites had gone in a goal up at half time, and then on the 19th of November, 12 weeks after being the relegation zone United moved in to an automatic promotion spot after beating Shrewsbury 2-1 in a game where had been utterly dominant in the first half but struggled in the second half after Shrewsbury had 2 men sent off.
The Blades then struggled to break down a Bury side who had come to Bramall Lane to defend and snatch a point with United utterly dominating the play but somehow being unable to break the Lancashire side down until an injury time goal from the new cult hero Ethan Ebanks-Landell sending the Lane in to a frenzy. It was clear at that point this was a team giving its all, but also a team with the happy knack that a lot of teams who get promoted show in scoring late winners, a trend that would continue throughout the season. However, that trend was to be broken in the following game as United in from a huge travelling supported saw a win snatched from our grasp thanks to a late, late Charlton goal, and then our 16 match unbeaten run came to an end with a 1-0 defeat at home to Walsall in a game that we would have won on a different day.
