Wilder OUT - megathread

[Tom Bott]

we have players in our squad who are MORE than capable of beating anyone in this division on their day

If only these players played to that level every game, then we wouldn't need to use Wilder as a scapegoat.
We know what Campbell can do, but how often does he do it.
How is that Wilders fault?

 

[Back post bob]

My view is always the season starts and I make my judgement when the transfer window closes and we have played 6 to 8 games we have played 5. Won 2 drawn 3 so yes performance leaves a lot to be desired but has someone else said we do have the players capable and a couple of additions before the window closes could change everything.
The older experienced players brought in are to stop what happened last year when from a winning position we were incapable of seeing a game out and lost the match.

 

[Spadge54]

same fans that were going mad when rumours of mcburnie coming back last year surfaced saying he wasn’t good enough hahaha

 

[Bookers Mullet]

I still think Wilder is comfortably our biggest problem.

We are consistently one of the worst footballing teams to watch, despite him having had some of the biggest budgets available to a Sheffield United manager. He was negative when he had money and better players, and somehow the football has become even worse as the squad has declined.

What actually is the game plan? Park the bus, launch it into the channels, roll your sleeves up and get stuck in? That seems to be about the extent of it. It’s park football being played by people earning vast sums of money, while the value and technical quality of the squad gets progressively worse.

I constantly hear “he needs a season”. He’s had fucking loads of time across his spells here. This isn’t some manager who arrived six weeks ago. We know exactly what his football looks like, and apart from that brilliant first spell, it has progressively become more negative, more basic and more shite.

Even with a depleted squad, we still have players like K. Phillips, Seriki, Riedewald and Bamford who should have enough quality for this level, yet he seems incapable of getting a functioning football team out of them. We regularly look unable to string five passes together. Everything is smashed long, chased into channels and built around second balls rather than actually controlling a game.

His recruitment philosophy compounds the problem. Familiar players, English players, players who work hard, “good lads”, players who will get stuck in. Effort matters, obviously, but where is the emphasis on technique, intelligence, creativity and players comfortable on the ball? We’ve ended up with a squad desperately short of technical quality because the entire philosophy seems built around graft first and football second.

And the familiarity our fanbase has with Wilder because he’s local and “gets the club” has become a massive blind spot. If another manager was serving up this football without the Sheffield United connection, I genuinely don’t think people would tolerate it.

He can steady a ship. Fine. But he cannot be the man responsible for building the next one.

The longer he stays, the further backwards I think we go. Keep accepting this as the blueprint and I honestly think he takes us to League One.

Any manager who plays and starts as many CDMs as Wilder should be a red flag. Fuck!

Edit:
One more thing, how many times do we sell a player and they instantly look better somewhere else?

Same player, same ability. The main difference is they’re playing under a different manager, in a different system, with a different style of football. Our fans have constantly blamed the players first and said they simply weren’t good enough. But when you look at where a lot of those players are now, plenty of them are playing Premier League football.

At some point it becomes pretty obvious the problem was somewhere else. It feels like a lot of them were playing with no plan, direction or too many restriction on, they leave and suddenly look like good footballers.

Could not have posted better, nail on the head.

 

[HOT CURRIE 10]

I don’t know for sure, I just think it’s unlikely.

Don’t get me wrong HC, I’m all for a new person coming in, in fact I’d welcome a fresh approach - I just don’t think now is the time.

I said I would give him a dozen games,I’ll stick to that. I’m wondering what input Phil Jones’s is having in this as assistant,he has not been brought up on that type of ‘football’.

 

[HOT CURRIE 10]

I get the logic, especially with the state of the club and the lack of money, but I think that’s also how we end up permanently kicking the decision down the road..

It’s “only 5 games” now, but he had all of last season. Before that it was give him January, then give him a full season, then give him his own pre-season. Now it’s wait until christmas. At what point are we actually judging what were seeing rather than waiting for the next milestone?

There’s never really a perfect time to change manager. If anything, maybe doing it last year would have meant we acted before this mess got worse, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I’m also not convinced the new additions suddenly change the style. If Choudhury is genuinely one of them then it almost feels like a parody at this point. More physicality, graft and familiarity when we’re already crying out for technical quality and creativity.

And I don’t really buy the “Wilder cares” argument as a reason to keep him. Of course he cares, but every manager cares about the job they’re doing. Caring and being able to get a team organised enough to grind out results isn’t the same as being the right person to take the club forward. Its a minimum.

The bit I really disagree with is the idea that nobody else could get more out of this squad. Wilder has partly built it and currently isn’t getting much out of it himself, so why does that prove someone else couldn’t? There are internationals and players with plenty of experience at a higher level in there. Another manager might not perform miracles, but surely it’s reasonable to think somebody could coach more football into them than this.

The board absolutely deserve a huge amount of blame and I agree the bigger picture is a mess. But the performances, tactics and way the team is set up are still the manager’s responsibility. You can blame individual players for bad games, But when the same problems carry on for months and seasons it stops being an off day.

Maybe Wilder does steady us enough to survive, and maybe that’s the safest option. But personally I can’t keep watching this football. I stopped bothering at times last season because it was so bad, and I’m already getting to the same point again. Ultimately it’s my time and money and I want to actually enjoy watching us. I’m not expecting exceptional football, just some positivity, some intent and occasionally something about the team to actually feel proud of.

For me the bigger risk now is becoming so scared of change that we just accept decline because it feels familiar. Selles got six league games. Wilder seems to get endless extensions to the point where we’re allowed to judge him..

I’d rather take the risk of trying something different than spend another six months finding out what I feel like we already know.

Cannot disagree with any of that really,well put.

 

[HOT CURRIE 10]

I still think Wilder is comfortably our biggest problem.

We are consistently one of the worst footballing teams to watch, despite him having had some of the biggest budgets available to a Sheffield United manager. He was negative when he had money and better players, and somehow the football has become even worse as the squad has declined.

What actually is the game plan? Park the bus, launch it into the channels, roll your sleeves up and get stuck in? That seems to be about the extent of it. It’s park football being played by people earning vast sums of money, while the value and technical quality of the squad gets progressively worse.

I constantly hear “he needs a season”. He’s had fucking loads of time across his spells here. This isn’t some manager who arrived six weeks ago. We know exactly what his football looks like, and apart from that brilliant first spell, it has progressively become more negative, more basic and more shite.

Even with a depleted squad, we still have players like K. Phillips, Seriki, Riedewald and Bamford who should have enough quality for this level, yet he seems incapable of getting a functioning football team out of them. We regularly look unable to string five passes together. Everything is smashed long, chased into channels and built around second balls rather than actually controlling a game.

His recruitment philosophy compounds the problem. Familiar players, English players, players who work hard, “good lads”, players who will get stuck in. Effort matters, obviously, but where is the emphasis on technique, intelligence, creativity and players comfortable on the ball? We’ve ended up with a squad desperately short of technical quality because the entire philosophy seems built around graft first and football second.

And the familiarity our fanbase has with Wilder because he’s local and “gets the club” has become a massive blind spot. If another manager was serving up this football without the Sheffield United connection, I genuinely don’t think people would tolerate it.

He can steady a ship. Fine. But he cannot be the man responsible for building the next one.

The longer he stays, the further backwards I think we go. Keep accepting this as the blueprint and I honestly think he takes us to League One.

Any manager who plays and starts as many CDMs as Wilder should be a red flag. Fuck!

Edit:
One more thing, how many times do we sell a player and they instantly look better somewhere else?

Same player, same ability. The main difference is they’re playing under a different manager, in a different system, with a different style of football. Our fans have constantly blamed the players first and said they simply weren’t good enough. But when you look at where a lot of those players are now, plenty of them are playing Premier League football.

At some point it becomes pretty obvious the problem was somewhere else. It feels like a lot of them were playing with no plan, direction or too many restriction on, they leave and suddenly look like good footballers.

The edit bit on that is spot on,then quite a few of our supporters boo and ridicule them when they come back. Excellent and true statement of what is happening and what has happened in the last few seasons.

 

[S17 Blade 1889]

If only these players played to that level every game, then we wouldn't need to use Wilder as a scapegoat.
We know what Campbell can do, but how often does he do it.
How is that Wilders fault?

To be fair, he is his manager and just gave him a three year deal. He surely must take some responsibility if Campbell doesn't perform this season?

Wilder gets some silly stick but players not performing and contract length must be somewhere in his remit.

 

[Tom Bott]

Well the poll says it all

Not if the 27% make more noise, they can convince themselves that they are a majority and hence correct.

 

[Champagneblade]

To be fair, he is his manager and just gave him a three year deal. He surely must take some responsibility if Campbell doesn't perform this season?

Wilder gets some silly stick but players not performing and contract length must be somewhere in his remit.

Problem is fans get to have their cake and eat it because they are not on the hook for any decisions.

Campbell, Pig Slayer extraordinaire, signs a new deal - people complain.

He shows some form later in the season and we’ve missed our window to tie him down so he leaves at a reduced fee at the end of the season or he leaves for free - people complain.

Club simply can’t win.

 

[Tom Bott]

To be fair, he is his manager and just gave him a three year deal. He surely must take some responsibility if Campbell doesn't perform this season?

Given that we can't afford to replace him we have to hope that Wilder can somehow do what he managed with Leon Clarke. The worry being that after Clarke was given a new contract he disappeared, seemingly more interested in choosing the colours of his new Bentley than scoring goals.
Looking at Clarke's career he has been with over 20 clubs and only had purple patches with 4 or 5 of them, so is this down to the managers or the player?
The statistics show that he can do it, so were the 15 managers where he 'failed' also failures?

 

[Tom Bott]

people complain.

Nail - head.

 

[GeorgeDonis1889]

State of this thread

 

[Tom Bott]

State of this thread

Mega or should it be MUGA - make United great again.

 

[The Fox]

Massive lack of creativity and backbone ..

That's just the posters on here

 

[Kona]

I said I would give him a dozen games,I’ll stick to that. I’m wondering what input Phil Jones’s is having in this as assistant,he has not been brought up on that type of ‘football’.

Maybe he’s just biding his time…

 

[ekke287]

Problem is fans get to have their cake and eat it because they are not on the hook for any decisions.

Campbell, Pig Slayer extraordinaire, signs a new deal - people complain.

He shows some form later in the season and we’ve missed our window to tie him down so he leaves at a reduced fee at the end of the season or he leaves for free - people complain.

Club simply can’t win.

I’ve said before and will say again, it is possible to support the club but disagree with how things are run. We are paying supporters and therefore have a right to voice concern as needed. If those concerns are left unsaid, all that will happen is the disdain for the lack of communication and direction will grow.

Campbell, yes he’s scored against the pigs, but is that the only yard stick to measure with then? Cannon did too but regularly gets pelters, despite being our only scoring striker this season. Brewster scored against them too, and was regularly the target of sustained negativity over a number of seasons.

Wilder has made numerous mistakes and questionable decisions, yet because he’s done well before, he gets an almost infinite free pass. As others have said, the players leave and perform well elsewhere, so they’re obviously not shit after all.

Almost every excuse in the CW playbook can be invalidated with logic and reason, but because he “gets the Blades”, he’s some sort of god amongst men.

Step back and look at the facts, he has no plan for tactics, positional awareness or signings beyond former players who no one else wants. He needs a preseason, he’s had one. He needs a full season, he’s had many. He needs better staff around him, he’s got talented coaches with him.

We’re are a point where I’m genuinely confused about what he actually needs, because it’s just constant excuses and blaming other people for his own ineptitude, which has spilled into the fans. And despite the rhetoric of “well I go to the games and everyone around me loves Wilder” there IS division in the fan base now, when we need unity more than ever.

As for the board, fucking hell cry me a river. They’ve backed him before and have given him the keys for another couple of seasons, with their own off field issues what do we expect them to do? Open the bank and give him another £30m budget to blow on Cannon, Souttar, Phillips etc? Equally he’s also supposed to be good at building a low cost but efficient squad, so which is it?

We’ve drawn three of three, so it’s not doom and gloom, but fans are right to be concerned when it’s now fully in his control and we’re seeing the same shite as last season (and the back end of the season before), and the excuses served hold little to no weight.

Now we have the distraction of the board issues, so he’s got another free pass to fall back on. The idea that no one else can do it is a joke, because currently what the “it” looks like is anyone’s guess.

 

[54yrblade]

I get the logic, especially with the state of the club and the lack of money, but I think that’s also how we end up permanently kicking the decision down the road..

It’s “only 5 games” now, but he had all of last season. Before that it was give him January, then give him a full season, then give him his own pre-season. Now it’s wait until christmas. At what point are we actually judging what were seeing rather than waiting for the next milestone?

There’s never really a perfect time to change manager. If anything, maybe doing it last year would have meant we acted before this mess got worse, but hindsight is a wonderful thing.

I’m also not convinced the new additions suddenly change the style. If Choudhury is genuinely one of them then it almost feels like a parody at this point. More physicality, graft and familiarity when we’re already crying out for technical quality and creativity.

And I don’t really buy the “Wilder cares” argument as a reason to keep him. Of course he cares, but every manager cares about the job they’re doing. Caring and being able to get a team organised enough to grind out results isn’t the same as being the right person to take the club forward. Its a minimum.

The bit I really disagree with is the idea that nobody else could get more out of this squad. Wilder has partly built it and currently isn’t getting much out of it himself, so why does that prove someone else couldn’t? There are internationals and players with plenty of experience at a higher level in there. Another manager might not perform miracles, but surely it’s reasonable to think somebody could coach more football into them than this.

The board absolutely deserve a huge amount of blame and I agree the bigger picture is a mess. But the performances, tactics and way the team is set up are still the manager’s responsibility. You can blame individual players for bad games, But when the same problems carry on for months and seasons it stops being an off day.

Maybe Wilder does steady us enough to survive, and maybe that’s the safest option. But personally I can’t keep watching this football. I stopped bothering at times last season because it was so bad, and I’m already getting to the same point again. Ultimately it’s my time and money and I want to actually enjoy watching us. I’m not expecting exceptional football, just some positivity, some intent and occasionally something about the team to actually feel proud of.

For me the bigger risk now is becoming so scared of change that we just accept decline because it feels familiar. Selles got six league games. Wilder seems to get endless extensions to the point where we’re allowed to judge him..

I’d rather take the risk of trying something different than spend another six months finding out what I feel like we already know.

Word for word, an articulate and evidenced explanation of how many are feeling and have felt for some time.

Thank you.

 

[Tarqs]

We're full of experience throughout the team, they should be more than capable of passing around younger teams but we don't even try to beat the press we just hoof it.

I've been saying it for years but it always feels like the other team have an extra player as we somehow end up outnumbered everywhere on the pitch. We hit it long to isolated strikers and the second ball is swept up by a free opponent. They then have options as we're nowhere near anyone and a few one touch passes later and they are on our 18 yard line. We expel so much energy chasing them down that everyone is knackered.

We used to be masters of overloading the opposition full backs and passing it around in triangles. Everyone wanted the ball and knew what to do with it, there were always multiple options. Now no one wants the ball, no one shows for it, players are left isolated, and we end up with 30% possession because we can't win it or keep it.

Made me chuckle that against cardiff, with a back 5, then 3 defensive midfielders on the pitch, they walked through us time and time again, totally unopposed...
28 shots lol.

 

[Tarqs]

A few reasons screaming “mid table” at me:

We were shit last season and we’ve taken the 2 best players away.

Tom Cannon starts up front.

Joe Rothwell plays in midfield.

Mark McGuinness plays at the back.

We play a version of football bereft of tactics and are terrible at both passing and hoofing.

Screaming relegation battle to me.

 

[utd4ever]

I’ve said before and will say again, it is possible to support the club but disagree with how things are run. We are paying supporters and therefore have a right to voice concern as needed. If those concerns are left unsaid, all that will happen is the disdain for the lack of communication and direction will grow.

Campbell, yes he’s scored against the pigs, but is that the only yard stick to measure with then? Cannon did too but regularly gets pelters, despite being our only scoring striker this season. Brewster scored against them too, and was regularly the target of sustained negativity over a number of seasons.

Wilder has made numerous mistakes and questionable decisions, yet because he’s done well before, he gets an almost infinite free pass. As others have said, the players leave and perform well elsewhere, so they’re obviously not shit after all.

Almost every excuse in the CW playbook can be invalidated with logic and reason, but because he “gets the Blades”, he’s some sort of god amongst men.

Step back and look at the facts, he has no plan for tactics, positional awareness or signings beyond former players who no one else wants. He needs a preseason, he’s had one. He needs a full season, he’s had many. He needs better staff around him, he’s got talented coaches with him.

We’re are a point where I’m genuinely confused about what he actually needs, because it’s just constant excuses and blaming other people for his own ineptitude, which has spilled into the fans. And despite the rhetoric of “well I go to the games and everyone around me loves Wilder” there IS division in the fan base now, when we need unity more than ever.

As for the board, fucking hell cry me a river. They’ve backed him before and have given him the keys for another couple of seasons, with their own off field issues what do we expect them to do? Open the bank and give him another £30m budget to blow on Cannon, Souttar, Phillips etc? Equally he’s also supposed to be good at building a low cost but efficient squad, so which is it?

We’ve drawn three of three, so it’s not doom and gloom, but fans are right to be concerned when it’s now fully in his control and we’re seeing the same shite as last season (and the back end of the season before), and the excuses served hold little to no weight.

Now we have the distraction of the board issues, so he’s got another free pass to fall back on. The idea that no one else can do it is a joke, because currently what the “it” looks like is anyone’s guess.

The most telling part of this new ownership was agreeing to sanction the 10 million for cannon.

If they had done their due diligence they would have known Wilder has wasted a vast amount of money on strikers.

They should have told Wilder to replace Souttar

 

[HOT CURRIE 10]

Maybe he’s just

Maybe he’s just biding his time…

We let 1 walk through the door a little while ago,much respect by pros and was destined. Keith Andrews. His stock has rocketed.

 

[BiggerBladeThanThou]

If only these players played to that level every game, then we wouldn't need to use Wilder as a scapegoat.
We know what Campbell can do, but how often does he do it.
How is that Wilders fault?

By your logic we should just do away with managers altogether because natural talent and capability alone ought to see players through. Unfortunately for us, it doesn’t work like that. Wilder is paid to get a tune out of an ensemble of different talent and personalities, he isn’t and should be banished into managerial oblivion

 

[Nedski]

I've compared us to the U7/8/9 football I've been watching every week for the past 3 years.

When a team has the most basic tactics trained in to them (for example, 3 simple passes from kick off to the same players in the same position each time) they look like they are playing a completely different game to to the other team that spends training sessions doing shooting drills and not much else. My sons U7 team is full of good individual players but at kick off they are stood within a metre of each other talking about Roblox. Meanwhile the other team has a central attacker, two wingers and a defensive midfielder already in position, and before a ball is kicked you know it's going to end in tears.

 

[NerdyBlade]

The older experienced players brought in are to stop what happened last year when from a winning position we were incapable of seeing a game out and lost the match.

We had older players in the squad during the 92pts season, and still fucked up holding onto wins and not dropping points