Guardian writers’ predicted position: 20th (NB: this is not necessarily John Ashdown’s prediction but the average of our writers’ tips)
Last season’s position: 2nd in Championship
Odds to win the league (via Oddschecker): 2,000-1
Sheffield United have broken their transfer record four times since securing promotion to the Premier League but the most important signature they acquired in the close season was not that of an incoming player.
On 9 July Chris Wilder signed a new contract to 2022. No matter the size of United’s summer splurge – and the Blades have spent more in the past four weeks than in the previous 14 years – nothing will overshadow the importance of keeping hold of a manager who has masterminded the club’s rise from League One to the Premier League in three seasons.
It has been a swift ascension for the club but a long road for their manager. Of the five men taking charge of Premier League teams for the first time this weekend – Wilder, Dean Smith, Graham Potter, Frank Lampard and Daniel Farke – Wilder has had by far the lengthiest apprenticeship. The 51-year-old is closing in on 1,000 games as a manager (not counting his time coaching Bradway FC in the Meadowhall Sunday League), the majority coming in six-year spells with Halifax Town and Oxford United.
The Blades were ailing when he returned as manager in the summer of 2016, and under Nigel Adkins had just registered their lowest league finish since 1982 – 11th in League One. The turnaround has been nothing short of astonishing and it is not an exaggeration to suggest that United have never had a manager so universally adored, inside the club and on the terraces. Perhaps only Dave Bassett comes close.
Bassett’s big-money signing of the summer after he guided the Blades into the top flight in 1990 was John Pemberton, at £300,000 an upgrade on the right-back who had played much of the promotion campaign – one Chris Wilder. Neil Warnock didn’t exactly splash the cash when he took United up in 2006. Wilder, though, has found the purse strings a little looser.
The key arrivals have been in attacking areas. The summer’s first new record signing was Luke Freeman – one of the Championship’s best attacking midfielders over the past four seasons – who arrived from QPR for about £4m. Callum Robinson, hugely impressive with Preston last year, arrived for roughly twice that and Lys Mousset’s £10m arrival from Bournemouth trumped them both.
On Friday the striker Oli McBurnie joined from Swansea for £17.5m, taking the summer spree to over £40m. This is entirely new territory for the club. Nevertheless there’s an element of risk in all four. Freeman, Robinson and McBurnie are well established Championship talents; the question is whether they can thrive at the higher level (the same applies to the midfielder Ben Osborn, a £3m arrival from Nottingham Forest). It is not a dissimilar approach to that taken by the club after their promotion to the Championship in 2017, looking to take the best talents from the division below and hoping they can make the step up.
Mousset, on the other hand, has 58 Premier League appearances, though they translate to only 1,191 minutes in total. Wilder will back himself to unlock the potential of a player who piqued the interest of Arsenal and Tottenham as a teenager at Le Havre.
Speaking of untapped potential, perhaps United’s most intriguing signing is that of Ravel Morrison. The lament is pretty familiar by now – the star of Manchester United’s 2011 FA Youth Cup side that included Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard, the most talented youngster Sir Alex Ferguson had seen since Paul Scholes, a player with so much ability that Barcelona, Chelsea and Arsenal mulled over taking a gamble even when ill-discipline and attitude had seen United wash their hands of him … and an itinerant career that has never delivered on his teenage talent. Wilder has specialised in confounding expectations. Getting a tune out of Morrison would be up there with the most surprising.
The former Lazio, Atlas and Östersund (and Queens Park Rangers and West Ham and Birmingham) midfielder will likely act as something of a plan B, with Freeman at the tip of the midfield triangle if United stick to the 3-4-1-2 that served them so well in the Championship. That would enable the use of their overlapping centre-backs (it seems cavalier yet the Blades had the joint-best defensive record in the Championship), a tactic that proved hugely effective in the promotion campaign.
Perhaps more likely, given the increased standard of opposition, Wilder may opt for a flat back four, as he did on a few occasions last season. Either way the defence will have a familiar look. John Egan and Jack O’Connell were the bedrock and will be so again, joined by either Chris Basham or the returning Phil Jagielka if they play in a three.
Jagielka’s return, 12 years on from his exit to Everton, may owe something to sentiment (in United’s last Premier League season he scored a 91st-minute screamer against Middlesbrough to secure their first win then cemented himself in United folklore by playing in goal and keeping Arsenal at bay at Bramall Lane in a chaotic, adrenaline-soaked 1-0 win that was undoubtably the high point of the campaign) but he also brings Premier League experience and knowhow – few others in the squad have played more than a handful of top-flight games.
Behind the backline the England Under-21s goalkeeper Dean Henderson has rejoined on loan from Manchester United, a vital addition that initially appeared a formality but took a little longer than Wilder would have liked. Henderson will have the opportunity to force himself into senior contention at Old Trafford and possibly even with Gareth Southgate’s side. He’s certainly likely to be busy enough.
George Baldock and Enda Stevens will be either the wing-backs or full-backs depending on how ambitious Wilder is feeling, while John Fleck and Ollie Norwood will provide the ballast in central midfield, with Norwood finally getting a chance in the Premier League after two promotions to the top flight with Fulham and Brighton but no games to show for it.
Billy Sharp and David McGoldrick, last season’s leading scorers, may face a battle for game time among the signings but Wilder has shown in the past he is not a manager who puts much stock in reputation or price tag. If the stalwarts prove more effective than the new arrivals, then they’ll spearhead what in all likelihood will be a difficult battle for survival.
Quick guide
Premier League 2019-20 season previews
To survive they’ll have to break a trend. United’s last two seasons in the Premier League – in 1993-94 and 2006-07 – ended in agonising final-day relegation when on both occasions they had their fate in their own hands. But past pain hasn’t quelled optimism – the club have reported record season-ticket sales and Bramall Lane is likely to be sold out for most of the season. Why so cheery? Perhaps because fans have seen the full extent of the Wilder effect at close quarters.
