CROSBY: CHRIS OF LIFE CAN END EXILE

FLYING: Chris Wilder MALCOLM CROSBY reckons Chris Wilder is ready to switch on Sheffield United’s promotion staying power.

The Blades were bottom of the Championship after losing their first two games but have stormed to the top following four straight wins and only one defeat in 10 matches.

Wilder’s boys faded to a 10th-place finish last season, having been second-tier leaders for the first time since the

2005-06 promotion-winning campaign.

But Crosby (below) who was Oxford United’s head of football development when Wilder was manager, believes his old colleague could end the Blades’

12-season exile from the Premier League.

Crosby, Sunderland boss when they lost 2-0 to Liverpool in the 1992 FA Cup Final and now scouting for Frank Lampard’s Derby County, said: “Chris is a good manager – he doesn’t take any crap. “Sheffield United are flying at the moment and I think they’ll be up there, possibly in the play-offs.

“They tailed off last season but it was their first year back in the Championship after he had got them promoted.

“Chris has certainly done well.

“He did a fantastic job getting Oxford out of what was then the Conference back in 2010.’’

Wilder has brought the best out of playmaker Mark Duffy, who Crosby helped recruit for Birmingham as chief scout in the summer of 2014.

Duffy, 33, had a tough time with Blues and was loaned to Chesterfield and Burton Albion.

But he was one of Wilder’s first signings as Blades boss in the 2016 close season and has become the first-choice No.10.

As a result Wales starlet Ben Woodburn – on loan from Liverpool – has made only two starts in league and cup.

Crosby said: “I took Duffy to Birmingham on a free.

“He was a winger, he went past people and he was clever but it just didn’t happen for him.

“Now he’s fantastic at Sheffield United.’’