In talking about Sheffield United’s rise in the Premier League we need to mention three key names, club owner, Abdullah bin Musad bin Abdul Aziz al-Saud Galaz, chairman Musa’ad bin Khalid bin Musa’ad bin Abdulrahman Al Saud and manager Chris Wilder.
It has been a building process that has been going on with the club since the early 2010s and as we start a new decade all of that hard work and investment is bearing its fruits.
This season Sheffield United have got promoted to the Premier League and many media pundits and ex-players who had been involved within the game for years were expecting United to struggle. They used the same old cliche that if the club finished 17th this season it would be seen as a success because it would be survival. But United have been better, much better than that.
Let’s firstly talk about Chris Wilder’s influence on the team. Wilder was recruited in 2016 and didn’t start so well at the club, but then they had a fantastic run there on in and got 100 points as they got promoted from League one. But despite Wilder being financially restricted in his early years with the club there were two things in his and the clubs favour.
The first was that Wilder had played over 100 games for the Blades and was a life long fan. Having a professional manager and one who is a fan in charge of your club is a huge plus. The second was signing forward Billy Sharp. Sharp is a long time United fan too and that just means that there is so much extra passion for the job you are doing, you are no longer playing for a club, in some ways this is what your life is all boiling down too.
Sharp in his 2nd stint with the club has not let his manager down either. He has scored 89 goals from 180 games, scoring 23 in the Championship last season. Whilst the striker has struggled somewhat to adjust to the Premier League as he only has 2 league goals so far he has also had niggling injuries and played just over half of his clubs games.
But with the right owners and Wilder in charge the club just have a fantastic winning mentality. Media pundits have called the team a boa constrictor. In that they let the opposition have the ball early on and then take a grip of the game and do not let up, and let’s face it they have been very impressive this season. So impressive that there is talk they could finish 4th and claim the final Champions League place for next season, imagine that?
For now they are in 5th place and have won their last two games in a row. They would need to find a little more consistency of course as they have still lost 7 games this season.
Wilder, who has got the team promoted twice in three seasons was rewarded with a new 4 year extension contract and rightly so, just how far the Blades could go is only limited it seems by their dreams.
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