Wilder is steeled for city dust-up
CHRIS WILDER was asked this week how the intensity of the Steel City derby compares to some of English football’s great rivalries.
“The Liverpool-Everton derby doesn’t do anything for me, nor does NewcastleSunderland, but Sheffield United-Sheffield Wednesday certainly does,” said the Blades manager.
Wednesday versus United, as it will be at Hillsborough on Sunday lunchtime, is a fixture to raise the heartbeat. That it will be their first meeting since a League One clash in February 2012 only adds to the intrigue.
Wednesday, traditionally viewed as the bigger club, are upwardly mobile again and have reached the Championship play-offs in the past two seasons.
Sheffield United, after six years in League One, were promoted back to the second tier in the summer and currently lie in sixth spot – three places above Wednesday.
The good times are back, if not quite on the scale as when they met at Wembley in the 1993 FA Cup semi-final as Premier League clubs.
Wilder, a boyhood Blades fan who turns 50 tomorrow, said: “Our results this season have not been flukes and we have earned every point we’ve got.
“We’re a dangerous team because people don’t really know what we’re about, having been in League One for six years. Sheffield Wednesday know we can hurt them and we know they can hurt us.
“I’ve got family and friends who are Wednesday supporters, but I’m going to make sure that it’s us who are smiling on Sunday afternoon.
“Of course they are going to make it hostile for us, as we would do at Bramall Lane, but there is a line that shouldn’t be stepped over.”
The contrast between Yorkshireman Wilder and his Owls’ Portuguese counterpart Carlos Carvalhal could not be greater. The pressure is on Carvalhal to guide the Owls to promotion and defeat by the arch enemy would not sit well with the club’s huge support, with 33,000 expected at Hillsborough.
Wednesday defender Tom Lees said: “It’s a win-at-all-costs game but we have to look at it as hopefully contributing to the bigger goal.
“We have to get promoted this season, whichever way we do that. We have seen in the last two years the play-offs are a bit of a lottery. With the team and the squad we have here, EFL CLUBS indicated yesterday they were overwhelmingly in favour of keeping roughly in line with the Premier League and shutting the transfer window early next season.
A vote was taken at a meeting of all 72 clubs to draw up a rule change to close the window for permanent transfers on the same day as the Premier League deadline DERBY DAYS: Bright and Waddle, left, celebrate their goals in the Owls’ 1993 FA Cup semi-final win and, below, their last meeting in 2012, and United’s Wilder, right – or possibly even before the EFL season starts – with loan moves still permitted until the end of the month.
A formal decision will be made after a further vote in February.
They also discussed giving the EFL board unprecedented US-style powers to intervene at clubs being run badly, that’s our only target. That’s what we will be judged on.”
Thai owner Dejphon Chansiri has invested heavily in the Owls squad and Wilder added: “With the money they spend, the wages they pay and price they charge for a ticket, it goes without saying that Wednesday will be looking to go up.
“We’re in a slightly different stage to where they’re at but that all goes out of the window on Sunday. Are they the favourites? Being in the playoffs for the past two seasons, spending all that dough and having all those big-name players, I think so. Just.”
Chris Turner was part of the last Wednesday team to be promoted to the top flight 26 years ago before returning as manager from 2002 to 2004 during a difficult period in the club’s history.
The ex-keeper and boyhood Wednesday fan said: “This is the biggest derby game the city has seen for a long time.
“Sheffield United have made a great start and Wednesday have made a decent start, which makes it extra special.
“Every football supporter thinks their derby is the best, but on Sunday you’ll see one hell of a rivalry between the fans. It’s a bit different now to when I grew up watching Wednesday because you had a lot of local lads playing for both clubs then. “I remember the famous ‘Boxing Day Massacre’ in 1979 when Wednesday beat United 4-0 at Hillsborough in front of nearly 50,000. The fans still sing about that now. Sheffield is a proper football city with two big clubs. When you look at the size of the crowds they both get, you can see the
potential.” with clubs backing an investigation into what can be done to prevent another Leyton Orient, where owner Franceso Becchetti went through 11 managers while dragging the club into non-league football.
Chief executive Shaun Harvey said: “Undoubtedly the reputation of the EFL has been damaged by some owners during their times in charge of clubs. So there’s a general view that we should look at what else we can do.
“We quite often see this in franchise sports. American organisations have the principle where, should the other owners determine that the damage is sufficient to the industry, the central organisers can take a hold.”