Blades determined not to risk ruin by gambling with high wages on Championship return
MANAGER Chris Wilder insists Sheffield United’s “sensible” approach to recruitment will be maintained in the Championship after revealing the club had rejected prospective signings this season due to excessive wage demands.
The Blades clinched promotion at the weekend with four games to spare and are odds on to go up as champions.
Amid this air of jubilation at Bramall Lane and a desire to lift the title later this month, minds have started to turn to next season and the return to a level at which United last competed six years ago.
“The Championship is a tough division,” Wilder told The
Yorkshire Post. “But I do believe we can be competitive in a league where the money situation has, in my opinion, become ridiculous.
“Some people gamble and end up ruining a club. We won’t do that. We will be sensible in our approach. This is a club with its feet on the ground.
“Changes will have to be made, we all know that. The competition is going to be huge next year, as there are a lot of big, big clubs up there. But we are going to be up there on merit and ready to face the challenge head on.
“That is what this club is all about, facing what needs to be faced. I am sure we will invest in the right way and ensure we keep progressing.”
United’s push for promotion has been relentless for most of the season. A tally of 26 victories from 42 matches is testament to that, as are the 50 points that the Blades have taken from 22 outings since early December.
Impressive recruitment has been at the heart of this success along with a work ethic that Wilder worked hard to instal from the moment he succeeded Nigel Adkins last summer.
As a lifelong fan and former ballboy, the 49-year-old appreciates just what promotion means to a group of supporters who have been put through the emotional wringer in recent years. This affection for the Blades is also why Wilder, a member of the squad that won back-to-back promotions under Dave Bassett in 1989 and 1990, will not put the club’s future at risk with a spending spree.
“Football has changed a lot since we went up under ‘Harry’ (Bassett) from the old Third Division and then went straight up again,” he added. “The money situation has become ridiculous.
“The Premier League is a different world to what it was like back then. But so are the other leagues, to be fair.
“There are so many teams who gamble everything in the hope they will strike lucky. But it often doesn’t work out and then these clubs get in a mess.
“We won’t be doing that. The club is the most important thing. Everyone knows how I feel about Sheffield United and I would not do anything that could put us in danger.
“To be fair, we have adopted that approach in the last two transfer windows. We have had players offered to us that we have said ‘no’ to because of the wages they wanted.
“Big players, too, who we felt would have been a good fit for the club. We get offered players all the time and, obviously, if they aren’t the right fit then that is the end of it. These would have been good for Sheffield United, but the deals just weren’t right. It is not a road we will be going down.”
CHRIS WILDER was still eight months short of his 21st birthday when Dave Bassett first swept into Bramall Lane.
The former Sheffield United chief remembers a quiet lad with an exemplary attitude, whose time at a club he had supported all his life ironically later came to an end as a result of their promotion to the top flight.
Almost three decades on, Wilder the manager is rightly being lauded for steering the Blades back into the Championship at the first attempt. And Bassett, a mentor to Wilder throughout his managerial career, could not be happier.
Speaking to The Yorkshire Post, the 72-year-old said: “Chris adapted very well to the job, as I knew he would. He is a Sheffield lad and a Blade through and through, but that doesn’t guarantee anything.
“A few of those have been and gone without doing anything like the job Chris has done.
It’s a club that will take some stopping when the momentum is behind it. Former Blades boss Dave Bassett on the achievement of Chris Wilder this season.
“Things were a bit iffy early on this season. But he had the personality to get through that and the experience to turn things round.
“For me, Chris and his players deserve to win the championship this season. They are the best team in League One.”
United’s promotion is the fourth of a management career that began just a few months after Wilder had called time on his playing days in 2001.
Alfreton Town took a chance on the former full-back, who left such strong foundations in place that the Derbyshire club went up again 12 months after winning the Northern Counties East Premier in 2002.
By then, Wilder was finishing the first of six seasons at the helm of Halifax Town. This would prove to be his true apprenticeship, every manner of problem being thrown his way at a club where money was so tight that it would eventually collapse under the burden of £2m debts.
“It is like trying to win Formula 1 in a Ford Escort,” is how Wilder would sum up the Shaymen’s quest to earn a Football League return when speaking to his staff privately. But for an equaliser by Hereford United with just 10 minutes of the 2006 play-off final remaining, he would have won that race to escape the Conference against all the odds.
Four years later, Wilder took Oxford United into the League and, if the Blades can go on to clinch the title later this month, he will become the first manager since Ian Porterfield 35 years ago to lead different clubs to back-toback championships in the bottom two divisions.
Bassett said: “When I first came to Sheffield (in 1988), Chris was already there. He had been released by Southampton, but was determined to make a career for himself. He was a quiet lad, who just got on with his job. I honestly can’t recall having any problems with him.
“I did, though, give him a hard time. He would probably say I was too hard, and that he felt always to be just one bad game from being dropped.
“But I wanted to toughen him up. He had great technique and, in my time at Sheffield United, showed great stoicism to stay a part in things.
“I let him go once we were in the Premier League. His ability and attitude were not a problem, he just wasn’t the quickest and you have to be at the top level.
“Look at Kyle Walker; Chris probably had better technique and he certainly could cross a ball better. But Walker has pace. If a winger got past Chris, he wouldn’t be able to get back.
“After leaving us, he went to Rotherham and had a good, solid career. He then took that work ethic into management, and the great thing with Chris is he learns as he goes along. Halifax, Oxford and Northampton have made him the manager he is today.
“A lot of managers are up themselves these days, taking themselves far too seriously. But Chris is the exact opposite.”
At the start of the season, Bassett and Wilder spoke frequently. As they had during the summer after he had first been offered the opportunity to return to the Lane.
More recently, though, contact has been restricted to the odd text or congratulatory chat over the telephone.
“That is how it should be,” added Bassett, who holds the joint record of seven promotions with Graham Taylor. Jim Smith and Neil Warnock.
“There is not a lot to say, things are going well and Chris just needs to get on with it.
“Plus, he is the sort of lad who, even if you don’t speak for a year, you just pick up where you left off.”
As for Wilder’s achievement in taking the Blades up, Bassett added: “Six years at this level is, to me, a complete and utter joke. But Sheffield United can now go places as a club.
“It is a club that will take some stopping when the momentum is behind it, especially with the fans up for it. Chris and the players will feed off that, and he will know what needs doing in the summer to strengthen. It isn’t easy and no one wants to put any pressure on. But there is a momentum there now that can push the club on further. ”