3:29 Chris Wilder talks about the challenges of returning to training ahead of the Premier League restart
George Baldock and Ben Osborn have described the lockdown programme as tougher than a regular pre-season. Captain Billy Sharp has come back “ripped,” according to goalkeeper Simon Moore. The home Wattbike sessions and socially-distanced drills arranged “with military precision” finally culminated in warm-up games of incremental duration – against Huddersfield, Hull and Barnsley – at Bramall Lane last week; an attempt to acclimatise to echoes and empty seats.
“It was key just to go through what it would be like. It’s incredibly difficult to be without the supporters, even though in the grand scheme of things, it’s a small price to pay,” Wilder says. “I know what they’re all about and they know how much they’ve driven us on. It’s a connection we’re going to miss, no doubt, but other teams will miss it too – Man Utd playing in front of 70,000 when they’re going well.
“In a way, playing away from home in the first three games means we can pick things up which might work for other clubs. But it’s all so different; three coaches travelling to games, being in the hotel by ourselves, players not getting out of their cars and signing autographs… it’s going to be a whole new experience.”
And so the mind as well as the sinew matters, perhaps more than ever.
Wilder was particularly taken by Liverpool on a wet January night where his side were rarely well beaten; not by Anfield’s pre-match rituals, nor the thrilling counter-attack up close, but how the fundamentals underpinned the hosts’ 2-0 victory.
“They ran forward, they ran back, they defended as a team,” he said in reflection. “You look at the appetite and desire of everyone in the football club and there’s a feeling of relentlessness about them. They were bang on it from a mental aspect.”
The Blades boss has been moulding his own mentality monsters ever since he took the job at his boyhood club.
He dabbled with sports psychology to help his players over the line in League One but has closed ranks this time, retaining a penchant for pinning disparaging soundbites to walls and summoning myriad experiences from his side’s breakneck journey to the top tier – like last season at Villa Park, when a 3-0 lead surrendered in the final 10 minutes prompted a scrap in the changing room but proved pivotal in the run-in.
“You trust that the players will show the mentality they have done over the past few seasons; how they’ve coped with disappointments, how they’ve handled success, what drives them, what motivates them – and you keep reminding them of all those things.
“We can’t suddenly think we’re something we’re not – that’s certainly been a reminder from me.
“It’s been about getting the same intensity and tempo in training and delivering the same messages – there’s always clarity in terms of the message; I’ve always felt that when players have a clear head, when they can relax, that’s when you get the best results.
“A lot is talked about managers and their influence but if you haven’t got good players with a good mentality, you can put the best manager in the world in there and he’s going to struggle. It has to come from within. It certainly comes from within for me and it comes from within for them.
“I’d be disappointed if they hadn’t come back with the same mentality. The boys are absolutely together and I’m not surprised they’ve come back wanting to finish what they’ve started.”
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The time for full appraisal will come later but lockdown has been an opportunity to hunt for marginal gains tactically, too. The underlying stats in attack and defence have matched Wilder’s eye test when squaring up his side against unlikely rivals Manchester United and Tottenham – both with key players returning – as well as Wolves, afforded time to regroup after their Europa League exertions.
There is confidence to be drawn, he agrees, from the fact his side are unbeaten against those sides, and if Bundesliga results have suggested home advantage may be diminished in the Premier League, a team only behind Liverpool when it comes to fewest defeats on the road might be even more hopeful of taking reward at a sparse Old Trafford as well as Villa Park.
With record signing Sander Berge’s full integration a longer-term project, Wilder is plotting only tweaks; training ground footage from the club’s social media channels has shown players familiarly working on wide patterns of play. But one area ripe for improvement is the goal return from the likes of John Egan at set-pieces and assistant Alan Knill, a free-kick connoisseur, “is always up to something,” Wilder says with a chuckle.
“The video analysts and the coaching staff have been looking at bits and pieces; with the delivery that we’ve got, we should certainly be scoring more from the centre-halves. That’s been a little negative from our point of view, the amount of opportunities that we have and the positions that we get into. But tactically we’re not going to change much. We’re fine-tuning.”
The most partisan supporter would have struggled to envisage this, with 10 games to go. Just surviving in the top flight has been remarkable; a top-10 finish would be an even more impressive achievement. Yet wing-back Baldock is still driven by the “burning desire to prove people wrong”. Oliver Norwood, who has signed a new deal ahead of the restart, has dreamed of being part of what just might become Sheffield United’s “greatest ever team”.
Wilder insists his focus is firmly on Aston Villa, locked in a different type of battle at the other end of the table, but the manager, like his influential midfielder, knows that opportunity knocks.
“What the players have achieved coming into the Premier League has been amazing but it has to continue if they are going to achieve what was unthinkable when we first stepped into the division.
1:06 Sheffield United’s Oliver Norwood says the team have the opportunity to become the ‘greatest’ team in the club’s history by qualifying for Europe.
“The players have upped their game to get the results they have; they know they can do it but the key is to keep doing it. We can’t take our foot off the gas. We have to pick up where we left off.
“We have the opportunity of turning a great season into a truly memorable one. If we do, it’ll be right up there. We want to climb a little bit higher. We’re going to give it everything.”
The Premier League is back and however this story ends, Sheffield United are ready.
Sourse: skysports.com
