Sheffield steel When Michael Vaughan met Chris Wilder
Michael Vaughan catches up with his old friend and non-league coach Chris Wilder to relive late nights of team bonding and scraps at Headingley, and to find out how he healed the rifts at Sheffield United
We are sitting in Chris Wilder’s office at Sheffield United, just a few steps from the double doors that lead onto the pitch at Bramall Lane. It is small, with a big television at one end and some hotplates at the other ready to serve food to opposition managers. The menu has had to become a bit posher since United were promoted to the Premier League.
“We’ve tried finger buffet and sandwiches. Didn’t work. Then we went for crisps and a few kebabs. We still haven’t cracked it,” he says. “Maybe it will be a Deliveroo in future.”
Chris and I have been friends for more than 20 years, share a similar group of mates and even went to the same school, although he is a bit older than me.
He would come along and watch me play for Yorkshire and England and I have even managed to put to one side my Sheffield Wednesday affiliation to chat to him today.
And the Bramall Lane manager’s office is a far cry from the mid1990s and the Cricketers Arms pub where Wilder’s Sunday-morning football team, Bradway United, used to drink after matches. I was part of that team and, believe me, there was no finger buffet. Chris was taking his first steps into management but even then he had a gift for handling people, something I tried to take into my own captaincy.
The Cricketers is still there – it has hardly changed, in truth – and we had some mad nights at the bar with Bradway, win or lose. This little office serves the same purpose now.
“It is really important,” he says, looking around him. “We have had some great results, especially at home, over the last couple of years. But we have had long nights in here after defeats as well. A number of times we have walked out of here at 3am having just tried to put everything right. You dig deeper when you lose.”
Chris has spent 17 years building his reputation working with little money at clubs such as Alfreton Town, Halifax Town, Oxford United and Northampton Town. Now he is adjusting to life in the Premier League with his beloved United, the club he has supported all his life, and played for in the late 1980s. It was a different game then, I say.
“We used to get into other players’ heads mentally and physically,” he remembers. “It was me versus you, my future versus your future. Now there is a handshaking culture and we are all pals – ‘what are you doing later?’ That kind of thing. I sometimes struggle to get my head around it.”
Playing has changed, but Chris believes management is the same as it was on those Sunday nights in the Cricketers with Bradway.
“This sounds daft but the group I have now are no different to the majority of groups I have had, including Bradway. I want the same thing in the Premier League that I wanted on those Sunday mornings. Be together, fight for each other and win.”
It was rough-and-tumble stuff with Bradway and Chris broke his wrist one night in a particularly tasty encounter. It is lucky Yorkshire did not know what I was getting up to and I would play football right up until the early 2000s, even when I was an England player. My village side would just put a different name on the team-sheet.
“Obviously, my knowledge of the game has improved but I’ve tried to keep true to what I believe in. You still have to understand what makes players tick and make sure they understand what I want from them. I don’t want it to be a holiday camp, but it shouldn’t be a concentration camp either.”
Togetherness is a big part of his philosophy and it is obvious he has united this club. He says that when he arrived in 2016 there were divisions everywhere.
The players did not want to park in the ground for fear of having to interact with fans and there was a gulf between the staff, too. Not any more. It is clear Chris is the heartbeat of this club from the way all the staff welcome him as we walk through reception and the fans stop and chat to him as we wander down the road to have a photograph taken outside the Cricketers.
“I have to make the big decisions – which you had to do as well as England cricket captain,” he says. “When this club has been at its best it has been together and it wasn’t when I started. Supporters hated players. Players hated supporters. Staff hated players. Players hated staff. There was no connection and we had to get that relationship between club and players.”
I know from being England captain that you have to act. I used to look at some of the bad lads in the side and think: how am I going to give them a rollicking when I used to get up to the same things? You can’t kid a kidder, and Chris was not whiter than white as a player himself.
“Yeah, I’m always thinking: why is he asking me for a day off? Where is he going? I had an average career and should have done a lot better. Maybe that helps as well. I’m trying to squeeze everything out of these players because maybe I did not squeeze enough out of my career and maybe people did not squeeze enough out of me. I pick and choose my moments. I don’t want to be their pal but I want to know what is going on as well.”
United play Arsenal on Monday and have nine points from eight games. They have not been played off the park yet but Chris is still
demanding more. He raised a few eyebrows when he publicly criticised his goalkeeper, Dean Henderson, after making a mistake against Liverpool.
These days it is rare, in any sport, for players to be dressed down in front of the cameras. Sometimes, sport can be a little too nice but, at United – a bit like Yorkshire – they are still a little old school in their approach.
“It was a normal thing to me. Dean is a professional goalkeeper who is telling me every day that eventually he wants to be the No1 at Manchester United and England. Well, for that to happen he has to be pretty much faultless every game.
“He was fine with it. I know the boy. He got beat up, verbally, in our changing room last year by all the players. It was at Aston Villa. I stood by and watched. He went on to keep the most clean sheets in the division.
“My point was, I am not here to put my arm around him. I can’t be dishonest in this city. If I talk absolutely b------- and spin it, people here will spot it straight away.”
Chris has ripped down all the motivational quotes that were stuck to the walls when he arrived at Bramall Lane. For him, it is about deeds, not words.
“There was a sign up at the club that said, ‘Welcome to Work’. I didn’t get that. Welcome to work? Why welcome? You are here to run around and work. It should be expected.”
That Liverpool game was the eye-opener, the moment Chris realised he was at the top. “We did our stuff focusing on strengths and weaknesses, where we thought we could gain a slight advantage. We felt we could do it.
“But when I got the teamsheet I s--- myself: Van Dijk, Salah, Mane, Wijnaldum, Henderson. I said: ‘They’ve not made any f-----changes’, ”
United tried to present Jurgen Klopp with a bottle of champagne before the game in honour of being made Coach of the Year. We are welcoming in Yorkshire. But Klopp refused it until after the game when he came into Chris’s office and had a drink.
As a Wednesday fan, it is hard to see United doing so well but I am pleased for Chris because I know how hard he has worked and how difficult it is for British managers to work in the Premier League. It seems, like Chris, they have to fight their way up with a team.
Our support is a two-way street, as Chris has always loved his cricket. On the final day of the 2005 Ashes Test at Old Trafford, when the match was in the balance and thousands were locked out, somehow Chris and his mates wangled their way in. I remember looking down from the balcony and seeing them giving me the thumbs-up.
Many times he would come along to Headingley to watch Yorkshire when I was playing and, shall we say, he liked to throw himself into supporting Yorkshire from the Western Terrace.
“I remember a one-day cup quarter-final at Headingley one year. You weren’t playing and came and sat with us on the Western Terrace. We chatted about half an hour. You walked off and this fella turned round and went: ‘Do you know him?” I said ‘Yeah, he’s my pal.’
“He said: ‘Why ain’t he f-----playing for Yorkshire instead of always playing for England? He’s always f------ injured for Yorkshire. Why didn’t you have the b------- to tell him he should be playing more.’
“Well, I wasn’t having that. There was a bit of a scuffle and it got broken up. I was thinking: ‘My pal is England captain, doing brilliant, but here I am scrapping on the terrace about him.’ Anyway, that’s Yorkshire cricket for you.”
Yorkshire cricket and Yorkshire football. Hard schools that produce tough people.
‘My pal is England captain, doing brilliant and I am scrapping on the terrace about him’