It’s World Cup season, sort of, so Memory Lane has decided to borrow the format and apply it to something far more important: Sheffield United players from history.

Join Andrew Hague, David Beeden, Paul Kemp and Sam Parry as they each take charge of one section of the draw, defending their players on whatever grounds they choose: ability, stats, memories, cult status, vibes, or outright nonsense.

Oh, and we’re going to record another one. Help us decide the position?

David Beeden

Prior to the Qatar World Cup in 2022, I penned an article about Sheffield United players who had represented their countries whilst plying their trade at the Lane.

As an addendum to this piece, I discussed whether the Blades had ever had any players go to the World Cup, whilst still actually being a Sheffield United player. It was slim pickings, with only six – that would rise to eight – after the 2022 tournament. However, only three have made it onto the grass and played in a World Cup game.

• 1954: Ted Burgin - England (Goalkeeper) – did not play

• 1958: Alan Hodgkinson - England (Goalkeeper) – did not play

• 1962: Alan Hodgkinson - England (Goalkeeper) – did not play

• 1994: Alan Kelly - Ireland (Goalkeeper) – did not play

• 1994: Jostein Flo - Norway (Striker) – played three games as Norway went out in the first round

• 1994: Roger Nilsen – Norway (Defender) – did not play

• 2002: Patrick Suffo - Cameroon (Striker) – played twice as sub, including being sent off against Germany. Bizarrely, he left United during the World Cup so technically only managed one appearance as a Blade!

• 2022: Iliman Ndiaye - Senegal (Striker) – played once as sub before starting the final group game vs. Ecuador as Senegal qualified. He then started the 1-0 defeat to England in the round of 16.

• 2022: Adam Davies - Wales (Goalkeeper) – did not play

Fast forward four years and we are set to add a player to this tally, with Tahith Chong perhaps an unlikely representative on the football world’s biggest stage. Curaçao are one of four new nations to appear at the tournament, joining Cape Verde, Jordan and Uzbekistan.

Alongside current Blade Chong, there are eight past United players involved. There could have been even more selected, but England chose not to take Harry Maguire, Aaron Ramsdale, Morgan Gibbs-White or Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Scotland opted not to pick Oli McBurnie, despite an excellent season for Hull that culminated in him scoring their promotion-securing goal.

Daniel Jebbison was a late cut from the Canada squad, after being named in the initial extended squad. Anel Ahmedhodžić has made himself unavailable for his country for the last few years. Yasser Larouci has fallen out of favour for Algeria, as he has spent the last season on loan in the Greek league.

Granted, the connection to the Blades may be historic and/or brief, but these links may still pique interest, including a great trivia question for the future in the former Blades player who is managing at the tournament. Answer: Georgios Donis, who manages Saudi Arabia. You may also recall that the late Alex Sabella managed Argentina at the 2014 World Cup.

Here are the Blades (permanents and loanees), from most to least recent, who are set to take part. Who will start, and who has the opportunity to make the biggest impact during the greatest show on earth?

Tahith Chong - Curaçao (Midfield/Attack)

Caps: 4 games (2 goals)

Profile

Tahith Jose Girigorio Djorkaef Chong actually played for the Netherlands as a youth player right up to u21 level. He requested to switch international allegiance to Curaçao, the country of his birth, in August 2025, around the time that he signed for the Blades. He scored twice on his debut in a vital 3-2 World Cup Qualifier against Bermuda and has played a further two games, but injury prevented selection in other games this calendar year until he returned for a heavy loss to Australia. He also started in their recent friendly defeat to Scotland, scoring a superb individual goal.

Potential Impact

Curaçao are not expected to qualify for the knockout stages, and to even register a point would be considered a success. Along with Haiti, they are the rank outsiders at 5000-1 to win the World Cup. A tough start against Germany is followed by games against two other sides much more fancied than Curaçao, and it would be hard to see them achieving anything but fourth and an early exit. Qualifying was a feat and Chong is joined by other players with English league experience in Juninho Bacuna (ex-Huddersfield/Rangers/Birmingham), Leandro Bacuna (ex-Aston Villa and others), Kenji Gorré (ex-Swansea), Sontje Hansen of Middlesbrough and Ar’jany Martha of Rotherham.

Chong will play and he might get a chance to impress if he sees enough of the ball. His future at United is uncertain, so it would work for all parties if he has any kind of impact. We can only hope he shows flashes of that recent Scotland goal, which could see him stand out and alert clubs who might hand us a load of money – the Karel Poborský effect, if you like!

Games

v Germany, Sunday June 14th, 6pm BST, Houston

v Ecuador, Sunday June 21st, 1am BST, Kansas City

v Ivory Coast, Thursday June 25th, 9pm BST, Philadelphia

Tyler Bindon – New Zealand (Defence)

Caps: 22 games (2 goals)

Profile

Bindon was only 19 when he made his debut for the All Whites and has won 22 caps in two years, including an appearance off the bench during a pre-tournament friendly against England. He played in the Olympics in 2024 and, despite having already played for three clubs in the UK, has been a mainstay at the heart of the New Zealand defence. His last start was in March, a 4-1 friendly win against Chile.

Potential Impact?

Like with Curaçao, you can’t see New Zealand progressing far in the tournament but the new enlarged format means they could potentially battle Iran for third place. However, even this might not be enough, with only eight of the third best teams from the 12 groups going through.

Bindon will be busy, and with his Forest future uncertain despite having two more years left on his contract, he will know a positive tournament may garner interest from sides even outside the UK. I am not sure United will go back in for him as, with Tanganga and McGuinness still here, Wilder will look for a more dominant centre back.

Games

v Iran, Tuesday June 16th, 2am BST, Houston

v Egypt, Monday June 22nd, 2am BST, Vancouver

v Belgium, Saturday June 27th, 4am BST, Vancouver

Harry Souttar - Australia (Defence)

Caps: 38 games (11 goals)

Profile

Souttar was a Scotland youth international but switched to Australia; his brother John, currently at Glasgow Rangers, will be travelling to the World Cup as part of the Scotland squad. Souttar scored twice on his debut, a 5-0 win against Nepal, and then scored another brace in his second game! His free scoring continued and he has averaged almost one in three – remarkable for a player at the back. He is the tallest ever outfield player to play for the Socceroos. He played in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and impressed at the 2022 World Cup.

Potential Impact?

He hadn’t played for Australia since 2024, when he was on loan at the Lane. He tore his Achilles tendon, meaning he was not available for club and country for over a year, but has started the last two international friendlies, playing the full 90 of a 1-0 loss to Mexico and 81 minutes of their 1-1 draw with Switzerland. He also recently returned for Leicester but it was too late to prevent the Foxes from plummeting into the third tier, despite a goal and some impressive performances.

Australia have selected him in spite of his injury issues, as he has been a dominant force for them. The group they are in presents a mixed bag: they might be the least fancied of the four, but there are no powerhouses in this group so I would not be shocked if they advanced.

Souttar will surely be looking to find a suitor – he has been linked with United and if he continues his rehabilitation then perhaps we might go back for him, as we look for that dominant centre back. However, if he performs well, then we might face competition for his services.

Games

v Turkey, Sunday June 14th, 5am BST, Vancouver

v USA, Friday June 19th, 8pm BST, Seattle*

v Paraguay, Friday June 26th, 3am BST, San Francisco Bay

Anis Ben Slimane – Tunisia (Midfield/Attack)

Caps: 41 games (4 goals)

Profile

Born in Denmark, Slimane was another who played for his country of birth in the junior sides, but moved his allegiance – he played for Tunisia at u20 level and then was picked for the full national side. He started two of their three games in Qatar prior to joining United. After his career somewhat stalled at the Lane, he has found a home at Carrow Road: he’s contracted with Norwich until 2028 and has shown some consistency after displaying only a few flashes of his ability with the Blades.

Potential Impact?

Another country who you do not envisage picking up many points. The three sides in their group all seem much stronger on paper. Slimane will have to work harder than he ever did with United, as his country will not see much of the ball, but he could get some opportunities on the counter attack.

He was a player that never seemed to last 90 minutes, so it will be interesting to see if this continues in the summer.

Games

v Sweden, Monday June 15th, 3am BST, Monterrey

v Japan, Sunday June 21st, 5am BST, Monterrey

v Netherlands, Friday June 26th, 12am BST, Kansas City

Auston Trusty - USA (Defence)

Caps: 8 games

Profile

Auston Levi-Jesaiah Trusty is now 27 and coming off the back of winning the Scottish Premiership title on the final day. His own performances were somewhat inconsistent, with errors occurring with alarming regularity. He has only played eight times over a three-year span for his country, but he did start in a 2-0 defeat to Portugal in April, and came off the bench for his country’s last two friendlies in preparation for the World Cup.

Potential Impact?

Trusty has not been a regular pick in the USA starting lineup. Former Spurs manager Mauricio Pochettino has operated with three centre backs but has preferred Crystal Palace’s Chris Richards, alongside veteran Tim Ream and youngster Alex Freeman. Richards has picked up an injury which meant he did not start the Europa Conference final win for the Eagles but is expected to be fit.

Trusty will probably only play in the event of injuries and I am surprised they do not have any other players that they see as better options. Another former Blade, Cameron Carter-Vickers, may have been considered, but he has suffered with injuries. USA are a host nation but the pundits and experts do not see them going very far. They have probably had more talent and a deeper squad in previous tournaments and, despite the popularity increase of Major League Soccer, the understandable influx of foreign players has arguably come at the expense of developing young domestic players. The group they are in means it is not beyond the realms of possibility they progress, and they face Souttar’s Australia in a potential winner-takes-all game.

Games

v Paraguay, Saturday June 13th, 2am BST, Los Angeles

v Australia, Friday June 19th, 8pm BST, Seattle*

v Turkey, Friday June 26th, 3am BST, Los Angeles

Iliman Ndiaye - Senegal (Attack)

Profile

Ndiaye was, of course, the most recent Blade to play at the World Cup, whilst still on the books at Bramall Lane. He has continued the ascension of his career, despite his move to Marseilles not being the success he would have envisaged. Now a key man for Everton and drawing attention from a number of top Premier League clubs, Ndiaye has been a regular starter for Senegal. He was involved throughout the African Nations Cup last year, which saw Senegal win the trophy, before the events of the final saw the tournament awarded to hosts Morocco.

Potential Impact

Normally part of a three-man attack, alongside Sadio Mane and Nicolas Jackson, Ndiaye has operated on both sides. A mouthwatering clash against France at MetLife Stadium kicks off the campaign for the Lions. Ndiaye will line up against former Blade teammate Sander Berge. They finish with an all-African affair against Ivory Coast. Senegal have shown in recent tournament football that they can excite but perhaps lack structure and defensive organisation. They possess enough talent to get out of a tough group. For Ndiaye, he will look to continue to accelerate his reputation further and perhaps convince one of the World’s big clubs to take him on the next stage of his journey to the top.

Games

v France, Tuesday June 16th, 8pm. New York/New Jersey

v Norway, Tuesday June 23rd, 1am. Toronto * versus Berge

v Ivory Coast, Friday June 26th, 8pm. Toronto

Sander Berge – Norway (Midfield)

Profile

Berge has been a regular starter at Fulham since joining from Burnley two seasons ago, as the West London side have become an established Premier League outfit. Berge seems content with the Cottagers, being a popular figure with teammates and fans alike. Berge has been playing for his country for 9 years now, after making his debut at only 19 years of age. An almost ever-present for his country, he has amassed 64 appearances but only scored a single goal, and that was 7 years ago, against Malta. This is the first time Norway have qualified for a major tournament since 2000, as they surprisingly hammered Italy both home and away en route to qualifying for the World Cup.

Potential Impact

Berge plays in a midfield three with Martin Odegaard and Patrick Berg, with Berge being the defensive anchor of the trio, sitting in front of the defence. Norway relies a great deal on Erling Haaland for goals, of course, but he invariably delivers. Their group is not easy with tough opposition in Senegal and France, but they qualified with ease, winning all eight fixtures. They will be confident of getting out of their group and then, who knows?

Games

v Iraq, Tuesday June 16^th, 11pm. Boston

v Senegal, Tuesday June 23^rd, 1am. Toronto * versus Ndiaye

v France, Friday June 26^th, 8pm. Boston

Dean Henderson – England (Goalkeeper)

Profile

After watching a young Henderson play so well in his two seasons with United, I was convinced he would go right to the top. His route has been circuitous as he never fully established himself back at Old Trafford and had to have a loan spell at Forest, before finally moving to Crystal Palace. The last year has seen him win the FA Cup, Community Shield and Europa Conference League titles – the latter as captain. He has been a consistent performer for the Eagles and maybe Man Utd gave up on him too early, especially considering some of their goalkeeping issues in recent years. He is a fan favourite wherever he goes with his ability to connect with the supporters and lay it all on the line.

Potential Impact

England have had an undoubted number one in Jordan Pickford for some time but Henderson has moved ahead of others in terms of being the next in line with the likes of Ramsdale, Pope, Trafford and others not even being regulars at their club sides. I remain steadfast that Henderson eventually will usurp Pickford and be the England number one, but, for this tournament, he will be a backup and will probably not feature unless unfortunate circumstances befall our existing number one.

Games

v Croatia, Wednesday June 17^th, 9pm. Dallas

v Ghana, Tuesday June 23^rd, 9pm. Boston

v Panama, Saturday June 27^th, 10pm. New York/New Jersey

Che Adams – Scotland (Attack)

Profile

Seems a long time since Adams was with the Blades. He left in 2016 – ten years ago! Since then, he has been at Birmingham and Southampton, before making a surprise move to Torino, in Italy. He is in the 2^nd of a three-year deal. He scored ten goals in 2024-2025 and followed up with nine more this last campaign. He ended the season with a late equaliser in the Turin Derby against Juventus, which will of course have enhanced his reputation with Il Toro. In terms of his international career, Adams could have played for England or Antigua and Barbados but picked Scotland, with his maternal grandmother being from Edinburgh. He became the first black player to represent Scotland in a major tournament (Euro 2020). He started all three games in Euro 2024 but his country exited in the first round.

Potential Impact

Adams has started a lot of the qualifiers for Scotland, and they do not have an assortment of goalscorers. Lawrence Shankland has had an excellent season for Hearts, but the other options are Championship strikers in George Hirst (albeit just been promoted), Ross Stewart and Lyndon Dykes. Adams might get the nod, depending on what formation Steve Clarke plays. Scotland traditionally struggles at the big tournaments and a minnow, such as Haiti, have caused them problems before. Yet, this opening fixture and Morocco are not the hardest of opening games. Brazil, although not the side they were, will likely be too strong but Scotland do have a chance of finishing 2^nd in this group.

Games

v Haiti, Sunday June 14^th, 2am. Boston

v Morocco, Friday June 19^th, 11pm. Boston

v Brazil, Wednesday June 27^th, 11pm. Miami

Georgios Donis – Saudi Arabia (Manager)

Profile

Donis, who was the first Greek to play in the Premier League, for Blackburn Rovers, had a nomadic footballing career. Donis played 21 games for his country over a six-year span. He played 7 games for us under Steve Bruce, signing as a free agent, and recall him being quite an exciting winger, with one superb showing, albeit in a hammering at Ipswich at the end of the 1998-99 season. Sadly, Bruce took him to Huddersfield with him after resigning from the Lane. After finishing his playing career, he moved back to Greece and went on a remarkable coaching journey, taking in 14 clubs. He has spent time in his homeland, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Israel. In April this year, he was named the new national team coach of Saudi Arabia, replacing the charismatic and popular Hervé Renard. This was a surprise change and will be a tough act for Donis to follow. He has only managed one game so far – a defeat to Ecuador – in May.

Potential Impact

Drawn in Group H alongside Spain and Uruguay, two sides with deep tournament pedigree, as well as the rapidly improving Cape Verde, Donis’ margin for error is minimal. The nation will want to lay down a marker ahead of being hosts, in 2034, as the game looks to develop even further in the Saudi Kingdom.

Games

v Uruguay, Monday 15^th June, 11pm. Miami

v Spain, Sunday 21^st June, 5pm. Atlanta.

v Cape Verde, Saturday 27^th June, 1am. Houston

Summary

A number of the players are expected to start, although the likes of Souttar, Bindon, Slimane, Chong, and their respective sides may not advance that far. Berge and Ndiaye might go deeper into the tournament in terms of escaping the group stages. Adams and Trusty are not guaranteed starters for sides that will struggle to advance. I would be surprised if we see any of our World Cup United players be involved as the tournament reaches the final stages, and maybe only Henderson, with England, might be around for the closing rounds.

Certainly, some of the former Blades are remembered more fondly than others. Berge, Ndiaye, Henderson and even Souttar contributed to successful sides. Adams was a young prospect who we made decent money on his sale. Others were not with United for that long (loans – Bindon; or did not work out - Slimane, Trusty), and the one that remains, Chong, many supporters would be happy for him to move on already, despite only signing last year.

As the World Cup moves to Spain/Portugal and Morocco in 2030, we will see if anyone joins the 9 players who have played for their countries, whilst still a Sheffield United player. It remains a very elite list, and the fact that only three (soon to be four with Chong) have actually stepped foot on a pitch at a World Cup, whilst still a Blade, is a damning statistic.

Keep an eye out for more World Cup writing and podcasts from The Pinch over the course of the tournament ⚽🏆

Hello. Sam here.

Like any sane person, I’ve been itching to combine my spreadsheet addiction with my overwhelming excitement for a World Cup I’ll barely be able to watch. Thankfully, David Beeden, Paul Kemp and the main man Andrew Hague have indulged my deepest desire.

Welcome to the World Cup of… what?

You’ll have to listen to this Memory Lane special to find out.

We’ve borrowed the World Cup format, and Sam’s spreadsheet has generated 48 Blades, sorted by position, then thrown them into a full tournament structure of groups, knockouts, arguments and inevitable injustice.

Andrew, David, Paul and Sam each take charge of one section of the draw, defending their players on whatever grounds they choose: ability, stats, memories, cult status, vibes, nostalgia or outright nonsense.

This is quick-fire remembering, World Cup-style. We aren’t simply pitting best against best. There are minnows, underdogs and, yes, a few actual dogs in the fight.

Part One takes us from the live draw through to the Round of 32. Episode Two will take us all the way to the final.

Oh, and whilst you’re here - we’re doing a fanzine again.

DEM Blades is back after three years away. The Summer 2026 fanzine is available to pre-order now, packed with Blades writing, photos, memories, nonsense and plenty more. You can order DEM Blades fanzine here.

DEM Blades summer special

DEM Blades is back

Three years after the last issue, DEM Blades is returning.

The Summer 2026 edition is currently being assembled by a ridiculous number of Sheffield United supporters, writers, photographers, designers, obsessives and conscripts. It’s all coming together faster than Adrian Littlejohn, or for those of you born after the millennium, than Oli Burke.

And, if you’ll forgive the lack of humility, it’s going to be superb.

So what’s inside?

Think Bochum. Think beyond.

Think European away days. Think moaning and non-moaning. Think words, pictures, Panini sticker nostalgia, fixture ticksheets and enough red-and-white detail to keep you occupied all summer.

We’ve got a Gus Hamer xG deep dive that will delight approximately sixteen stats obsessives. We’ve got some Bassett-era brilliance that everybody will enjoy. We’ve got new ideas, old memories and a few pieces that can only really be described as trivial madness.

In other words, it’s a proper fanzine.

More than anything, this issue is the product of a community. Every article, photograph, illustration and daft idea comes from people who care about Sheffield United. That’s what made DEM Blades special in the first place, and it’s what has made bringing it back worthwhile.

Please do put in an order if you’re interested. If you can share with Blades on WhatsApp, Facebook and Twitter and anywhere else you can — that’ll help too.

After three years away, we can’t wait to get DEM Blades back into people’s hands.

Thank you to everybody who has ever contributed, encouraged us, bought a copy, or signed up to The Pinch.

Sam

Pre-order Information

This is a pre-sale.

The fanzine hasn’t been printed yet. You’re not buying something that’s already sitting in a warehouse. You’re helping us understand how many copies we need to print, pack and send. And we don’t have a warehouse anyway.

Print Run #1 (Pre-sale)

Order before 1 July and you’ll be included in the first print run.

• First-run copies will ship on or around 20 July

• Stickers are available during the pre-sale only

Print Run #2

Orders placed from 2 July onwards will be included in the second print run.

• Second-run copies will ship during August

• Stickers will no longer be available

Stickers

You can add stickers to your order for £2.00.

You’ll receive two A5 sticker sheets featuring DEM Blades artwork. The designs shown in product images are mock-ups and may change slightly before printing.

Why It Costs What It Costs

We’ve spent a lot of time trying to find the balance between quality and affordability.

We want to print on decent paper stock rather than the cheapest option available. Good printing costs money. Postage costs money. Packaging costs a bit less, but not much. Every copy also takes time to produce, pack and send.

DEM Blades has always been a labour of love, but it’s still labour.

Every order helps make this issue possible and makes future editions more likely. We’ve tried to settle on a price that lets us produce something we’re proud of without making it unnecessarily expensive.

Shipping

UK

• Free UK shipping on all orders

• Sent via Royal Mail Second Class

• Usually arrives within three working days after dispatch

International

• Flat-rate international shipping: £3.05

• Please be patient; once it’s in the hands of Royal Mail, we’re all at their mercy

Words: Sam Parry

A bit of exposure therapy for me over the weekend. I was covering the play-offs for the brilliant Not The Top 20 and saw, for the second time in twelve months, a VAR-disallowed goal at Wembley.

Bloody hell. That was triggering. So too was spending three days watching defeated fans of Middlesbrough, Stockport and Salford stream out of the stadium, shuffling along Wembley Way, only to be greeted by digital signs reading: “Congratulations Hull… Bolton… Notts County…”

BRRRRRRRRRRRRRR. Chills and not the good kind.

Before and after the games, I got chatting to the other people working. And once conversations had moved on from the matches, and then from the weather (temps hit 36 degrees), we’d move on to the typical stuff.

“Who do you work for?” “Who do you support?” “What else do you do?”

I talked about The Pinch. I explained what we make, how it works, why we do it, and the bit that seemed to surprise everyone: that we, a club-level newsletter, pay our writers.

Okay, it’s not loads. Not “quit your job and move to Tuscany” money. But we pay them, and that is more unusual than I had realised in a FOOTBALL CONTENT WORLD.

It made me proud. There are plenty of fan sites that expect people to write for free, farming out trivial nonsense to new graduates because they can. Thanks to our subscribers, The Pinch doesn’t have to be one of them.

Subscribe now

And so this week, as I do every year, I sat down, made a list of everyone who has written for The Pinch over the last 12 months, and paid them for their work.*

That is the whole model, really. We are an independent Sheffield United newsletter with no expansionist ambitions, no ads, no special relationship with the football club. We just want to publish good writing, make good podcasts, share opinions we (or at least the authors) actually believe, and pay people for the care they put into it.

Everything we do will continue to be free to read and listen to. We like that. We like the honesty-box feel of it. Nobody is being locked out for not paying. But the reason we can pay writers is because enough people choose to.

So here is the direct ask: if you like The Pinch, and you can afford it, please think about taking out a subscription.

If £40 is too much in one go, monthly subscriptions are £5. And if you’d prefer to make a one-off contribution, you can do that through Buy Me a Coffee.

What’s coming up

We’re in the middle of a short summer break. It’s going to last until late in June. In that time, we’ll be planning the next run of pieces, getting some (frankly mad) podcasts in the can, and generally making sure The Pinch comes back fresh rather than frazzled.

I have a lot of things and ideas that I’m working on. Those include:

• Bringing back ‘Blades By Numbers’ so Sheffield United have the best club-level stats site in the world

• A “World Cup of Players” special for Memory Lane that involves an outrageous spreadsheet that has taken longer to code than the podcast could ever be

• Starting work on a monster Championship 26/27 preview

• Wearily sketching out ideas for a Gus Hamer tribute

• Oh, and I keep threatening to start a new fanzine - watch this space… maybe

Get involved

I’m currently working through a list of pitches - sorry that it takes so much time to get back to everyone. But now that summer’s here, I have a bit more free time to do that. And I’d love to hear from new people - you just need to reply to this email. Specifically, I’d like to read:

• Personal stories/anecdotes from days of yore

• A great tactical piece

• A strong opinion about what the club is doing right or wrong

• An article about the club’s history featuring an event or landmark moment that people may not remember

Also, if you have an idea for Memory Lane or would like to appear on Hang It In The Louvre - please do get in touch.

Right. Think that’s it.

Thanks for reading and subscribing. Huge thanks to David, Riley and Andrew — and of course, all our contributors across words and audio.

Catch you again for a good pinch of Blades stuff soon.

UTB Sam

*To any contributors reading this: if you haven’t been paid yet, check your email/Twitter DMs - I have contacted all!

One final Formline before we disappear for a summer lie down.

Sam, Riley and David review the season and answer listener questions before handing out the highly unofficial Pinch end-of-season awards — from best goal and biggest head loss to MVP and best win.

Along the way we revisit a Goldilocks season that somehow contained a six-game losing start, a 20-game spell as one of the Championship’s best teams, and a 13th-place finish that somehow felt both completely wrong and just right.

In Part Two of our look back at Sheffield United on VHS, we move into the 1990s. It’s a decade of survival acts, Wembley appearances, relegation heartbreak, and increasingly strange club videos.

Joined again by Paul Kemp and DeadBat, we revisit the season reviews, Christmas cash-ins, Brian Dean specials, and the gradual shift from grainy VHS tapes to the Sky Sports era. Along the way there’s Martin Tyler nostalgia, Dave Bassett appreciation, and stories of Wembley in 1993.

Leave a comment

Written by Sam Parry

Fans expecting a bang-average finish in mid-October were the eccentrics when Sheffield United were second-bottom, having lost 8 of 9 games. For the first time in ten seasons, mediocrity became aspirational.

This will have been a new feeling for the 14-year-old who took up their first season ticket in 2016/17, only now glimpsing the utter redundancy of a wasted campaign. Some might argue that two hopeless Premier League relegations were more disappointing. Some might pick me up on the fact that in 2017/18 we finished tenth and a good way off the play-offs, but even then, with four games to go, we were three points off fifth. The difference this season is not the annual frustration of being a fan; it’s the downgrading of expectation by off-pitch decisions and on-field meh-ness.

In the static years leading up to our promotion under Neil Warnock, or during our League One wilderness, performances and results were broadly stable, at least relative to themselves. You could tell whether we were in the fight or not by mid-October. This season, by contrast, was defined by volatility rather than sustained mediocrity. You have to look beyond the league table to see it, though, because our 66 goals for and 66 against expose little more than a middling campaign.

Yes, we were thirteenth when the music stopped. But the way it played out was more like utter volatility in nine stages: (1) Sheffield Wednesday form, (2) play-off form, (3) relegation form, (4) top-2 form, (5) play-off form, (6) mid-table form, (7) play-off form, (8) relegation form, (9) mid-table form.

Now that’s a question. And there’s a simple managerial answer that I won’t concern myself with. Neither will this review amount to a play-by-play of matches. Instead, I simply want to try to understand the season a little better using a lot of data underpinned by a fair amount of context. I want to avoid, as much as possible, using stats without that situational evidence. So here’s a timeline of events:

It’s easy to forget about the months missed by Peck and Riedewald. We forget Gus Hamer didn’t score until our 17th game. Most of us have erased from our minds the turgid Sellés-Wilder overlap between the 7th and 15th games of the season. Ultimately, our season is a tale of wasted time, but we shouldn’t let recent events colour our judgement of the whole.

1. Outcome vs Performance

The currency of football is goals. Scoring them wins games and creating the opportunities to score them, whether you actually turn shots into goals or not, indicates whether the underlying processes are any good. Oh, and turn all that on its head for conceding goals too.

The Blades scored 66 goals (ninth best). By tracking the cumulative average—adding each match’s goal total and dividing it by the number of games played—we can see how the side’s attacking output evolved over time before eventually settling around the 1.4 goals per 90 mark.

But if we’re going to think of goals as currency, then it pays to consider how we earn our dough: do we work too hard for every goal, do we possess such high-quality finishers that we score from relatively few chances, or are we profligate?

We can get a good idea by comparing the cumulative average of goals scored and comparing them with expected goals: a measure between 0.01 and 0.99 of whether a shot is more or less likely to become a goal based on shot angle, distance, body part and defensive pressure. It’s a measure of chances and their quality.

In many examples, underperforming expected goals for an entire season would suggest a lack of quality finishers. I don’t think Sheffield United in 25/26 are representative of that assumption. Our season-long underperformance is utterly inconsistent, formed of missed chances in many games and superlative finishing in others.

Sheffield United averaged a 55 per cent share of the expected goals. Over 46 games, this tells us we consistently created more and better chances than our opponents, which, as we know, is not a representative pattern. When we were good, we were very, very good. When we were bad, we were horrid.

Still, 55 per cent would suggest that, from a total of 132 goals for and against, an expected dispersal, not accounting for variance, would give 72 goals to the Blades and 60 to our opponents. Point of fact: we shared it out equally: 66/66. This was not down to chronic underperformance but chronic instability—it was a season of flux, and we fluctuated wildly, especially at the start and end of the season.

I listed some of the fluctuations in the Timeline (See above), but none are more pointed than Michael Cooper’s drop off. Now there’s the next part of the story. Because if goals are currency, then what kind of value are we getting on the exchange?

When it comes to goals against, we brought down our average over time, the inverse of our goalscoring over the season. Was this a reasonable return? Should we have conceded more or fewer?

Once again, when comparing GA and xGA over an entire season, there appears to be consistent underperformance at play. And once again, the season average doesn’t tell us about chronic inconsistency. This does 👇

It has been a season of regression and progression. Dips and rises. Ups and downs. However, when we look at our under/over performance on a game-by-game basis, three things strike me as being rather noisy. What would have happened if these three things were not the case?

1. Michael Cooper’s 12.5 xG swing

   1. 24/25 Goals Prevented: +5.7

   2. 25/26 Goals Prevented: -6.8

2. 13 different defenders used over the season

   1. 8 errors leading to goals/22 leading to shots

3. Luck… (yes, luck!)

One of the reasons expected goals are maligned is that they do not factor in the context. They are, I would argue, a valuable representation of chances created over time. But on a match-by-match level, other factors influence outcomes, and luck (or variance) is one of those factors.

Have Sheffield United been unlucky?

Luck does not iron itself out over the season. For example, when Sheffield United were at their worst (losing the opening 7 games), only 7 of 23 other teams could have faced us, which means the other 16 clubs had to face us when we were, notionally, better. The inverse is also true.

We played the entire top 6 (Coventry, Ipswich, Millwall, Southampton, Middlesbrough and Hull) before the 8th of November and lost all 6. Why is the 8th of November significant? Because that’s when Femi Seriki was brought back into the side, and we began playing a more balanced 4-2-3-1/4-2-2-2, racking up points, goals and xG along the way.

Suppose we had played the top 6 when we were better? We can’t have done worse than 6 losses. And then again, we also had to face Norwich twice under Philipe Clement, not when they were awful under Liam Manning. We faced Bristol City twice in the first games for two new managers, avoiding their poor runs of form. We didn’t get to face West Brom under Eric Ramsay. We didn’t play Cov in their dip nor Preston in theirs. Fixture-wise, I think we’ve caught the bad end of variance.

But such is life, and it cannot be helped. What can be helped, and what is worth deeper investigation, is how we created and gave away chances.

2. Creating Chances:

Simple question. Where did our goals 66 come from?

• ⚽ Open Play: 38 goals (58%)

• 🎯 Set Pieces: 16 goals (24%)

• ⚡ Counter Attacks: 6 goals (9%)

• 🥅 Penalties: 4 goals (6%)

• 🔄 Own Goals: 2 goals (3%)

None of these percentages is out of the ordinary. Especially not for a side that, despite a dreadful season, posted some of the best attacking numbers in the league - we were able to score from open play and did not over-rely on set-pieces. What is surprising, really, is that we didn’t score more considering the positions we got into.

One of the defining features of this campaign, and 24/25 too, was our relative dominance when it comes to the number of touches in the box we record versus our opponents.

For a side who registered the third-highest touches in the box (behind Boro and Coventry), it’s notable that we returned relatively few goals (compared to those teams’ 72, and especially Cov’s 90).

Part of the problem, as I see it, is that we too often attacked a well-set defence. Meaning we allowed our opponents a greater opportunity to make blocks. That would tally. Of our total shots (600), 30 per cent were blocked.

Still, when a team consistently has more touches in the box than their opponent, and consistently out-shoots them too, then any right-minded person would expect them to finish higher in the table, not lower.

It surprised me just how often we outshot opponents. I thought, therefore, there would be some wrinkle in our shot distances. Maybe we shoot from range more than other teams. But no, our shooting positions are more closely aligned with, say, the best team in the league, Coventry (1st), than the worst (competent) team, Leicester City (23rd).

🎯 Shot Positions:

• 🥅 6-Yard Box: ⚔️ Blades 10% | 🔵 Cov 10% | 🦊 Leicester 7%

• 📦 18-Yard Box: ⚔️ Blades 57% | 🔵Cov 60% | 🦊 Leicester 52%

• 🚀 Outside the Box: ⚔️ Blades 32% | 🔵 Cov 30% | 🦊 Leicester 41%

With the 7th-most shots on target in the league coming from the 4th-best xG, Sheffield United were one of the Championship’s better open-play sides.

Aha! The glaring question of whether our much-talked-about set-piece improvement is actually true. In a word: yes.

• 24/25: 12 set-piece goals

• 25/26: 16 set-piece goals

The reality is that Sheffield United’s rolling five-game set-play xG peaked above 0.7 in the autumn before steadily collapsing through the second half of the campaign, bottoming out below 0.2 by spring. We still created chances overall, but one of our most reliable attacking routes quietly reduced in its potency over time.

Yes, set-pieces provided diminishing returns. But it’s important to note that we underperformed our expected tally of 21.44 by almost 7 goals when we had the second-best set-piece xG behind Coventry FGS! Gah.

Small regression = big regression

Many of the stats above paint us in a rather positive light. Perhaps too positive; the data jars with a general gut feeling that we weren’t dominant. Though I would argue that in some games – ultimately too few – we were.

The biggest issue is the smallest detail: we converted too few of our chances, though we created plenty.

Sadly, the reverse is not true. Opponents were pretty lethal, or if you like, Cooper and Davies were bad, which leads to the defence looking worse, because of course, when your GK barely stops shots, defences are more likely to make strange decisions. Oh, and some defenders were pretty honking, too. In short, we conceded too many from the chances we gave up.

And again, it comes down to small margins.

In a brilliant post by The Bladesman account here, you can see how, since August 2024, we’ve gone from a team that gives away few chances to a team that gives a little bit more.

Sheffield United, today, need more chances to score a goal, and our opponents need fewer. Part of that’s a natural regression after losing Anel Ahmedhodžić, Vini Souza, Kieffer Moore and Jesurun Rak-Sakyi. Another part is self-inflicted: buying poor players and players playing worse.

3. Defensive Control

Where do shots against come from? Let’s repeat the earlier comparison:

• 🥅 6-Yard Box Allowed: ⚔️ Blades 10% | 🔵 Cov 7% | 🦊 Leicester 12%

• 📦 Penalty Area Shots Allowed: ⚔️ Blades 58% | 🔵 Cov 58% | 🦊 Leicester 57%

• 🚀 Outside Box Shots Allowed: ⚔️ Blades 32% | 🔵 Cov 35% | 🦊 Leicester 32%

Whilst the percentage differences look small, the number of shots allowed in the 6-yard box were eyewatering: 1 in 10 of our shots allowed (56) are taken from close range, versus 1 in 14 for Coventry (38). Simply, we gave away far too many clear-cut opportunities as a proportion of the chances against.

Now, it’s fair to say that, as a metric, “shots in box divided by shots” misses out a huge chunk of context. Sometimes, a team defends so well that the opponents fling crosses or launch long throws or whatever. There is such a thing as a bad opportunity in the box. But I’m not having that with us. We’re not a defence-first side who concede relatively few chances, meaning the opponent has to craft a good opening to get one at all. We allowed far too many good opportunities.

Now, when opponents do get their shots off, one long-running suspicion is that we are dreadful at getting ourselves between the ball and the goal. Blocking is a skill of athleticism and positioning, and fair to say, it’s one of the poorest parts of our game.

We can see this in the percentage of shots that we block versus how many of our own shots are blocked by opponents.

Blocking shots is a final act, though. And really, it speaks to both the fact that we take more shots than our opponents, but also that, where we take shots against settled defences, opposing teams tend to find bigger gaps in our defence.

The gaps are an interesting one. Because, in part, they are self-induced through a press that, personally, I enjoy. I want us to press. I also want us to press without shooting ourselves in the foot.

1️⃣ After pressing a Blackburn clearance we win possession and Tanganga plays it straight back to them. They play the ball into the space vacated by Hamer.

2️⃣ Blackburn’s outball finds their right-sided player, by which point only one centre-back is positioned in our own half. Tanganga out of position.

3️⃣ Tanganga is permanently behind play, though someone should have covered. Nobody has stopped the throughball. McGuinness is flat-footed. Burrows isn’t tight. And Hamer never got close to his man. The end result is a goal.

The point here is that opponents find space too easily, especially with Hamer and Burrows on the pitch (pray for McCallum). This space does not exist in a vacuum; when an opposition player finds a gap, our players respond to try to plug it, but it leaves another gap elsewhere.

It’s a common theme this season. We have conceded from 9 counter attacks, which is nearly 1 in 7 of all goals conceded.

Well, fair to say Sheffield United operated one of the Championship’s most aggressive and effective pressing systems. Only Middlesbrough recorded more “pressing sequences” – which describes breaking opponents’ possession through a press. As a proportion of all our defensive actions, 11 per cent were presses, which ranks as the highest in the division.

That pressure translated into:

• 331 high turnovers, the second-highest total in the league, of which;

• 59 ended in shots and seven directly produced goals

To me, this is a good sign. And I’d wager most fans prefer a blood and thunder press to a more static block. The issue, as far as this season goes, is that we have a squad cleaved down the middle between those who are natural pressers (O’Hare, Brooks, Seriki) and those who only ever seem to chase lost causes (Hamer) or else cannot shift in the middle of the park when we lose possession (Riedewald, Rothwell, Davies and to a lesser extent, Peck).

Ahead of the summer, it’s going to be interesting to see whether the profile of players we sign fits with a pressing style/transitional style or more of a controlled possession team. In 25/26, we’ve been caught between the two, to put it negatively. Or for a positive spin: we’ve been adaptable.

What I don’t like about this team is its versatility. Opponents find plenty of joy from any number of attacking strategies: open play, counter-attacks and set pieces.

4. Possession & Territory

There are two key questions I want to look at here. First, who keeps us ticking over and is responsible for regular build-up play as we move from back to front? Second, are there any correlations between passing numbers and results?

Among players averaging at least 45 open-play passes per 90, we find three types of high-volume ‘build-up merchants’:

Centre-Backs: Obviously, centre-backs tend to collect the ball from the goalkeepers, and are therefore more likely to make more passes than most. The above shows there’s a preference towards Tyler Bindon operating as the build-up merchant when he plays. He has a +8/+10 swing to Tanganga and McGuinness who are evidently less trusted.

Centre-Mid: When Oliver Arblaster plays, his numbers sit alongside Sydie Peck in terms of volume. Both play a similar role when on the pitch (and arguably shouldn’t play together); they collect the ball and are trusted to distribute FORWARDS. You might wonder where someone like Riedewald fits in here. Just 1 in 5 of his open play passes comes in the final third, whereas it’s 1 in 3 for Peck/Arblaster. Jaïro shuttles; Sydie or Ollie are tasked with getting us into a dangerous position.

Ooh, a Left-Back: A full-back being used as a build-up merchant won’t be a common sight across the football league, but Harrison Burrows’ unique (some would argue limited) skill set allows us to attempt riskier, more direct passes. Burrows has an excellent left foot, and his distribution gives us a longer, similar-but-different-to-Norwood range when hitting channels or targets like Bamford. In that way, he offers something that our centre mids lack; that front-to-backness.

Of the players to make more than 45 open play passes per game, he makes the highest number in the final third.

By and large, we do well at keeping the ball in good areas. In 25/26, we averaged 52.4 per cent possession. This splits up into a broadly average pattern, again, more like the Champions than the relegation teams.

• 🛡️ Own Third: ⚔️ Blades 27% | 🔵 Cov 26% | 🦊 Leicester 30%

• ⚖️ Middle Third: ⚔️ Blades 41% | 🔵 Cov 42% | 🦊 Leicester 42%

• 🥅 Opposition Third: ⚔️ Blades 32% | 🔵 Cov 33% | 🦊 Leicester 28%

Spending more time in the opponent’s half is a perfectly sensible way to avoid conceding goals. That’s why we so often see the ‘horseshoe’ of passing from left to right, ambling in possession, as a defensive strategy. It’s an enduring motif from our last promotion season under Heckingbottom.

However, the “meta” in Championship football today, arriving a little later than it did in the Premier League, is transitions or counter-attacks. One in ten Championship goals (146) come on the break.

Here we see that metric (opposition half passes/touches in the box) on a match-by-match basis during Sheffield United’s losses this season.

Teams in the Championship are taking fewer passes to create more chances, and it’s no surprise that most of our losses come when teams move the ball quickly in the final third. Part of that is on the opponent. Another part is down to our inability to defend transitions due to being slow. Another part is down to bad individuals.

All but four of our wins came in games where, on average, we took seven or fewer passes to return a touch in the opposition's penalty area. There have been some great passages of play this season; snappy, one-touch stuff. Not all of it comes off, but it’s a symptom of this side playing at its best. The stodgier, possession-heavy stuff allows teams to settle into a block; that’s us at our worst.

We have a fairly strong win bias towards games where we have less than 50 per cent possession. In fact, we only won four games with 65 per cent possession or more.

That said, I don’t love possession as a statistic because, more than xG, it abandons context altogether. What really makes the difference in possession (unless you’re Arsenal or PSG) is not style or tactics, but game-state. If you’re winning, you’re more likely to sit off, and your opponent is more likely to risk more men in advanced positions. In evenly-matched games, the scoreline changes depending on who has more or less of the ball. This is way more interesting to me, and way more revealing of this Sheffield United team’s deficiencies.

5. Game-State Behaviour

When goals change game-state

Sheffield United’s goal-state profile is a weirdly revealing one: we’ve been a terrible “reset” team. Only six of our 66 goals were equalisers – 9.1 per cent, the lowest figure in the division alongside West Brom. When games got away, they often stayed away.

That was also the case last season, but mostly because we took the lead in a huge majority of games. Not quite the same this term. But yes, our goals were much more likely to either put us in front or stretch a lead:

• 31 to take the lead

• 29 to increase our lead, or reduce an opponent’s lead

Defensively, United also conceded plenty of goals that changed game-state, with our opponents scoring:

• 28 goals to take the lead

• 13 equalisers

• 25 goals that increased or reduced a lead

That fits the broader theme of a side with pretty good underlying attacking numbers but lacking… what? Momentum, scruff-of-the-neck-stuff, bottle, guile? Once matches tilted out of our favour, we struggled big time. This is undoubtedly a fragile team.

And so, when Chris Wilder talks about experience (which is not, in my view, the same thing as age), I do see logic there. It is abundantly clear that this version of Sheffield United struggles not simply to fight back in adversity – because that is always tough – but to hold leads.

Goal Times

The timing data tells a similar story. United scored 30 first-half goals and 36 second-half goals, so the attack actually improved after the break (it usually does for most teams in any league).

But the defensive drop-off was stark: we conceded 25 before half-time and 41 after it, including 19 goals between minutes 46–60, our worst single 15-minute spell of the season. That post-half-time vulnerability is one of the clearest explanations for why strong attacking process did not translate into a stronger finish. Intangibles again. What on earth was going on at the break?

United were, however, strong starters. We scored first in 25 of 46 matches, which was joint-third in the division behind Coventry and Hull, and level with Ipswich, Middlesbrough, Millwall and Southampton. Look at those names: scoring first is the mark of a top team – except for us. That makes the season feel less like one of poor starts and more like one of poor control and arguably, poor individuals.

6. Individual Impact

Let’s begin with the lack of impact and the 14 players (not including Jack Robinson and Rhys Norrington-Davies) who played fewer than 1,000 minutes each and contributed a total of three goals and three assists.

As Churchill once said, never in the field of human conflict was so little achieved by so many for so few. Or something like that. Between them, these players racked up almost 6,000 minutes, or the equivalent minutes of Callum O’Hare and Gus Hamer combined. We should never, never, never forget that this movie showcased some terrible cameos. Those small contributions add up to so much.

Anyhow, the SQUAD.

The players with 1000+ minutes

Pat on the head for Patrick Bamford: he was the only player in double figures for goals, while Hamer and O’Hare carried most of the creative load with 77 chances created and 19 assists between them.

Still, for a side that created plenty overall, the end product was spread ridiculously thinly.

There are many data outputs other than goals and assists, I grant you. But this is what football trades in, and over 25/26, we lacked goal contributors. If, say, we had a player like Kieffer Moore or Oli McBurnie, I have no doubt we’d have at least one more player on 10+ goals because there were other players who consistently got us into good positions.

One output which reflects our good positions is carrying, moving with the ball. It is perhaps more important than sheer dribbling ability; that knack for taking the ball from A to B and doing something with it at the end is what separates poor teams and good teams. This graph plots our players against progressive carries (moving it forwards) and carries that end with a chance.

Andre Brooks combines Sheffield United’s highest progressive carry distance with the most carries ending in chances, underlining his importance as the side’s primary ball-carrying threat. It’s a unique skillset, a physical thing. And we’d miss that a lot if he were to leave.

Here we see the plotting of overall chance creation with open play chance creation to give a picture that both includes and cuts out set-piece impact.

Gustavo Hamer leads Sheffield United for total chances created per 90, but some of that edge comes from set-piece delivery. In open play, Callum O’Hare is the side’s most productive creator per 90, with Brooks, Bamford, Seriki and Peck forming the next creative group.

It’s Patrick Bamford.

When comparing goals per game with shots per game, Bamford is comfortably our most dangerous scorer, combining the squad’s highest shot volume with the strongest goal output. Hamer, Cannon, Campbell and Brooks all shoot regularly but convert at a much lower rate, while several midfielders post middling shot numbers with crap end product.

Going the other way

A quick look at defensive output. I don’t always love defensive numbers, because a poor side is going to have to make more tackles/blocks etc. than a good one. But here’s a comparison between aerial duels won and ground duels won. It gives some indication about which of our players is better at what.

There are some standout numbers here. Femi Seriki and Andre Brooks’ defensive output is clearly of huge benefit down our right. So too for Sam McCallum in his minutes, though unfortunately, the same can’t be said of Burrows and Hamer.

As for the centre-backs: yeah, they win a lot of headers. It’s their job. Bamford wins a fair number too, and it’s amazing to think of what this season might’ve looked like without a target up top. Clearly, he’s been one of the bright stars of a dim campaign.

Who were the stars? Let’s try a top 5:

5️⃣ The 6th-highest-ranked “Attacking Full Back” in the league

4️⃣ The 6th-highest-ranked “Defensive Midfielder” in the league

3️⃣ The 5th-highest-ranked “Advanced Striker” in the league

2️⃣ No.1 “Defensive Midfielder” in the league (2nd due to fewer mins)

1️⃣ The highest-ranked “playmaking winger” in the league

The Championship’s top-assist maker improved his Goals+Assists from 16 in 24/25 to 17 in 25/26, over fewer games and in a poorer side. Losing Hamer in the summer would be massive. He’s been a joy, even when he does those virtue-signalling, lost-cause presses. Always bringing a smile to the face, a goal from nothing, a pass nobody else saw.

Interestingly, other players up there according to the app were Harrison Burrows and Mark McGuinness. Perhaps it’s a surprise to see no Andre Brooks, Femi Seriki or Callum O’Hare amongst the top-rated players in their positions. For the record they were ranked:

• Andre Brooks — #16 — Inside Forward

• Femi Seriki — #13 — Attacking Right Back

• Callum O’Hare — #15 — Advanced Playmaker

Had I filtered out players with fewer than 2,000 minutes, all those three would’ve ranked higher. But I didn’t. So there.

Conclusion

From the day after QPR (H) until 28 Feb 2026, no team in the Championship secured more points than Sheffield United (38). That was a 20-game period when we were the “best” side in the league, at least according to the points return. Thirty-eight: it’s a figure just shy of 60% of our points in 43% of our games.

Hell, I want to dwell on the good times and not the bad. Because, as I searched for reasons to dismiss this United team, the biggest flaw I found was not a lack of quality, but underperformance born of inconsistency. When this Blades side turned it on, our dominance was at times that of an automatic contender. Look at the xG share here:

Those moments of utter domination were too fleeting, but they did exist. I suppose the question they leave behind is whether they were an unrepeatable hot streak. I’m not sure. If you take away the first 15 games (when we were dreadful) and the last 10 (when play-off motivation died), you could argue we were pretty damn good.

Too many “ifs” for my liking. So what about, as a final temperature check, we look at Chris Wilder’s spell only? That feels fair.

• All 40 of Chris Wilder’s matches

• They are sorted by bands of Expected Goal Difference (xG-xGA)

• This gives a reflection of the number of games in which we created more chances than our opponents

• I’ve divided these up into bands of Positive (slight and strong), Even, Negative (slight and strong).

There were far more dominant performances than dreadful performances. There were 19 clear positive performances to 11 clear negatives. Which leads me to the conclusion that the league table does lie. We’re not the thirteenth-best team in this division; we’re much better than that.

If the Championship ran for 1,000 games, we’d be closer to the top than the bottom. But it doesn’t. And our final position reflects, on the one hand, a terrible summer window, and on the other, what happens to a team when there is no upwards or downwards pressure at the business end of the season.

With that, I’ll call time on this incredibly long piece. Looking ahead to next season, I am perhaps more positive than I should be. The level of positivity depends on the ins and outs, although six play-off places will only ever revise my expectations upward.

No matter what, I expect greater consistency to pay dividends in 26/27: same manager, smaller squad, and sensible if unspectacular signings. Imagine what might’ve been if we’d had just a bang-average summer, Michael Cooper had saved a few more shots, and Patrick Bamford had played a full season.

Thanks for reading. This took a lot of time. Give it a share on socials, forums, or by forwarding the email that lands in your inbox.

Share

In this episode of Memory Lane, we revisit the golden age of Sheffield United on VHS. It’s often weird, sometimes wonderful and unusually pricey. Join Andrew, Paul and David to chat through grainy tapes, nostalgic highlights, and worn-out rewind buttons.

This is the first of two parts. See you next week for part two.

Oh, and if you want to hear the Tufty Club series on UNITED…👇

Leave a comment

Sam, David and Riley run through their pre-season predictions. Many were bad. Some were very bad. The rest? They were less bad. Join us to roast our past hot takes and toast the closing of the 25-26 season.

Take a trip down Memory Lane, walk past Better Day Alley, swing a left by Wistful Road, then a right by Sentimentality Street, then arrive on Commentary Corner. You have reached your destination: here there be Mann and Motson and more.

Leave a comment

David RS Taylor

We’ve all heard about (or experienced) the ‘Erreà Effect’. Brand new shirt, nice new design, one wash – and minor disaster takes hold. The printing might’ve fallen off; or the badge was at a jaunty angle; or the stitching wilted at the first sign of stress. I never fell foul of this well-worn shirt anecdote, but as we say ciao to our kit partner of the last four seasons, you can’t escape the grumbles.

Yes, Erreà. Nobody’s first choice. Barely a ripple was made when the brand was announced as our new manufacturer before the ‘22/’23 season, a sense of reputation drop-off in the air as we looked to our second consecutive season in the Championship. Now, with United’s ‘25/’26 limping to a flat close, we find ourselves returning to the templated arms of Adidas.

We know them well, of course, having been in partnership with the three stripes for eight years, as we charted a course out of League One and up to ninth in the Premier League. Oddly, though, it feels as if Erreà brought their Italian verve to Bramall Lane for just as long, not the four brief seasons they produced our kits.

Our Adidas shirts first time around were, on the whole, fine. But how many of them can you remember off the top of your head? I’m not asking folk like The Pinch’s own Sam Parry, or Memory Lane nostalgia merchant Andrew Hague, who can both probably reel off the last 30 years of shirts as a terrifying party trick. I mean you, the valued, loyal, emotionally balanced reader. The pink away shirt was nice, as was the all-black, and a couple of the home shirts have some good memories attached to them. Apart from that, though?…

With Erreà, the designs kept coming in a relentless march towards polyester nirvana. Remember the promotion shirt, with gold detailing and the White Rose sitting proudly behind the red and white stripes? What about the yellow away shirt, a retro tribute that would’ve been even more popular had the players that year managed to achieve anything at all? The outstanding black and gold number, and the even better burgundy goalkeeper version? The mad, special edition Chinese New Year releases? The consistently funky, Marmite-opinion-inducing training gear?

Football shirts are big business. I would say way too big. We don’t need a new club shirt each season; we all know the end-stage capitalism of it all, the unrelenting consumption of resources that could either be put to better use elsewhere or shouldn’t have been used at all. The factories producing some of these shirts have sketchy histories, and a quick search online brings up websites offering suspiciously similar kits to ‘official’ collections for a tenth of the price. The mark-ups are disgusting, fans are fleeced and the cycle begins again. And all that’s coming from someone who has for years blissfully ignored the lack of wardrobe space in their home with each new shirt purchase.

The Blades play in red and white stripes, which, while undoubtedly more engaging than a block colour shirt, is difficult to reinvent every 12 months. Yet Erreà managed to provide novelty home and away, from little colour accents creeping along plain stripes, to pared-back badges, to some questionable collar decisions. Then, with away and third choice shirts, there was even more fun to be had.

Fun is the concept that provides the shirt industry’s saving grace. It’s great to anticipate next season’s designs: will they put together an ode to an old favourite? Will they try a completely new colour or style? Am I going to be a medium, large or extra large?

That’s even before mentioning the major role shirts play in the heady effect of football nostalgia, with certain designs inextricably linked to telling seasons or moments. Think of fluorescent green, for instance, and different generations of United fan have their own fond memories. Regardless of shirt quality, Erreà created some great shirts that hold their own despite their tenure coming at a time when the Blades have experienced more ebb than flow, at least compared to the first Adidas era.

This isn’t to pour scorn on Adidas. Far from it: as far as the major sporting brands go, they’re by far the most inventive, and I’m looking forward to seeing what new tricks and design updates they have for us. A personal wish is to see a good range of subtle streetwear pieces, something that I think has been lacking at United for years. But when you watch the snazzy announcement videos and walk into the newly-bedecked ‘superstore’, spare a moment to remember the last few years, when a smaller brand got the gig and gave it a good go.

Badges dropping off and threads falling apart be damned. For four seasons, when it came to having fun with what we wore, we truly enjoyed La Dolce Shirta. Grazie, Erreà.

Cutting a squad is easy in theory, until you actually start doing it and realise it’s actually quite hard, in theory. In Part Two, Sam, David and Riley turn to the contracted core of Sheffield United and ask the uncomfortable questions: who do you build around, who do you cash in on and who simply isn’t worth keeping? From the Sydie Peck dilemma to the Gustavo Hamer debate, this is where the rebuild becomes trickier.

In this episode of Memory Lane, we revisit some of Sheffield United’s most iconic commentary moments: the lines that instantly bring goals, players, and matches flooding back.

Joined by commentator Chris MacMillan, we explore what makes great football commentary before diving into the calls that have defined Blades memories. From unforgettable goals to perfectly delivered one-liners, this is a celebration of the voices behind the moments — mostly, Daniel Mann.

This episode covers Chris’ pick from 14-8. Next week we’ll cover 7-1.

Leave a comment

Chris Wilder has already spoken about cutting 15 players — but when you factor in expiring deals, returning loanees and outgoings, the true scale of Sheffield United’s rebuild is far bigger.

In the first part of this Squad Reset podcast, we’re looking at who is either returning from loan or whose deals are expiring.

On this episode of Hang It in the Louvre, we welcome lifelong Blade David Pendlebury into the Pinch Wing to curate his three defining Sheffield United images. From a wide-eyed first view of Bramall Lane in the late ’80s, to the eerie emptiness of lockdown football and Chris Wilder at his lowest, to one of the most visceral moments in modern Blades history—Basham arriving at Elland Road.

Words: Ben Meakin - Women of Steel

It’s been a season that will likely be remembered as the one where Sheffield United’s owners turned up outside Chris Wilder’s door, flowers in hand and tears streaming down their cheeks, begging please Chris, take us back.

There’s something about football that makes us constantly yearn for the past, to reach for the home comforts of the familiar. To airbrush the grubby bits from history and think fondly about what once was, and what could be again… if only we could get the band back together.

As the season peters out and we creep towards the summer transfer window, minds are naturally beginning to turn towards new signings. In many cases, though, it’s new old signings we’re interested in – is Harry Souttar fit yet? Would Hamza Choudhury take a wage cut? And is James McAtee going to be surplus to requirements at Forest?

There’s something undeniably attractive about the prospect of running it back when you’re looking to make things better. Why take the plunge on something that might not work when we have real evidence of something that does?

Except… does it actually work that way? Recent history is littered with examples of run-it-back loanees who didn’t work out, not to mention players returning for second spells on permanent transfers. There are exceptions, of course. But let’s take a stab at grouping some of these former-ex-Blades together, and seeing what we can learn from them before we start chasing our summer targets.

For the purposes of this article, I’m excluding players who’ve stitched lengthy loan spells together back-to-back – James McAtee, Dean Henderson, etc. Also excluded are players who were loaned and then immediately converted to permanent signings, like Oli Norwood and Danny Webber. They’ll be considered as players who had unbroken spells with United – I’m more interested in what happens when we try and, well, gerremback.

Unfinished business: success

Examples: Billy Sharp (the third time), Aaron Ramsdale, Phil Jagielka, Brian Deane (the second time)

I think all four of these had their Blades days cut short before their prime, and returned later in their careers with various levels of success.

Billy Sharp cemented his status as a club legend (but hold that thought), firing us to multiple promotions and becoming the top-scorer in EFL history. Aaron Ramsdale’s first spell ended with him barely having sniffed the first team; he returned some years later as a Premier League regular, won our player of the season and was promptly flipped for a profit to Arsenal.

Jagielka’s career was still on an upward trajectory when he left for Everton in 2007, as United tumbled out of the top flight (we’ll overlook the, ahem, hand that Jagielka played in that). He returned in his career’s twilight years, but was a solid enough freebie who would play another 50+ Championship games even after he left us a second time.

Brian Deane was re-signed in 1997 and picked up where he’d left off as one of United’s best modern goalscorers. Sadly he was so good that he quickly left again, but it’s hard to say this was anything less than a successful reunion (Deane did later return for a third spell at the tail-end of his career, but barely featured).

Who might fall into this category as a potential signing with unfinished business? A soon-to-be-36-year-old Kyle Walker fits here, although he’ll still be under contract at Burnley. It’s hard to see how we’d be willing to pay enough of his wages that the Clarets would be happy to send him here on loan next season, particularly as they’ll be in the same league – but then I never would’ve envisaged us signing Kalvin Phillips, so who knows.

Unfinished business: flop

Examples: Billy Sharp (the second time), James Beattie, Marcus Bent, Ched Evans

This is where it gets a little messy. The less said about Ched Evans’ reunion with the Blades, the better. But Billy Sharp returned to fanfare having racked up over 50 goals for Scunthorpe, and it subsequently took him eight months to get off the mark in his second Blades stint. Less than 18 months later, he was loaned to Doncaster and eventually sold.

James Beattie was so good that he still finished as our top scorer in 2008/09, despite being sold in January. A return less than three years later – in League One – seemed like it would be a winner.

Not so much. Beattie copped a straight red for putting a Charlton player in a chokehold mere minutes after coming off the bench, missed an open goal in a mood-altering loss at MK Dons in the days after the Ched Evans conviction, and signed off with another straight red at Exeter on the final day of the season, ruling him out of the playoffs and ensuring his second spell ended goalless. Yikes.

Finally, Marcus Bent had an electric start to his Blades career in 1999, scoring 13 goals in three months and convincing Blackburn to shell out £2m for him barely a year after United had bought him for less than a fifth of that fee. His return eleven years later was slightly bizarre at the time, and he made 10 goalless appearances before United – who were relegated – sent him back to Birmingham.

It seems a bit unfair to project a future returning signing to be a flop, but let’s get creative. Oli McBurnie has had a good season for Hull and feels ripe for a classic Sheffield United emotional overpay to bring him “home”, only for him to get injured in October and miss three months of the season.

Tommy Doyle hasn’t pulled up trees at Birmingham but would likely cost a pretty penny – is there a world where we make good money on Sydie Peck and promptly blow it on a slightly inferior replacement? Recent history has at least put it on my radar.

I don’t want to write this one, but seeing as it’s staring us in the face, there’s another Birmingham player that Chris Wilder loved enough to make captain, before that pesky Ruben Sellés shipped him out. Jack Robinson reunion, anyone?

The returning favourite AKA be careful what you wish for

Examples: John Brayford, Ben Brereton Diaz, Wayne Quinn, Jon Harley

The distinction between this and the above category is that these are players who were here for a relatively brief spell, saw their popularity among Blades fans soar, and had us pining for a return. When that return eventually happened… it wasn’t as good as we’d hoped.

Brayford was probably the most-loved player in red and white during a loan spell that saw us rise from the doldrums of the League One relegation zone to a playoff charge and an FA Cup semifinal. “The Beard” went on an all-out charm offensive upon signing, and us fans, wallowing in a few years of third-tier misery, lapped it up.

Re-signing him the following season seemed like a rare case of giving the people what they want – until it became apparent that we’d, incredibly, spent something like £2m to do so, while still scuffling around in League One.

Brayford was… okay in this second spell, but the magic had gone. The team struggled to evolve under Nigel Clough, and spending millions on an(other) right-back began to look like a colossal waste of resources. The denouement was no fault of Brayford’s: he picked up a bad injury filling in at centre-back in the playoffs, and barely played for us again. But it also laid bare some muddled thinking at board level, of investing many eggs in one right-back-shaped, admittedly handsome, bearded basket.

Ben Brereton Diaz should have been a home run returnee: an electric counterattacker in our pitiful Premier League season, he looked tailor-made to do the same for us in the league below. Sadly, not so much, as he was half the player who’d sparkled 12 months previously at a higher level – with a brief cameo in the playoff final serving as a brutal full stop.

Two players who had bigger gaps between spells were a pair of left-backs: Wayne Quinn and Jon Harley. Academy product Quinn was electric in his debut campaign in 1997/98, earning an England B call-up and getting snapped up by Newcastle. A few years later he was loaned back to the Blades, but made only six unmemorable appearances before dropping out of professional football altogether at the age of 28.

Harley’s loan spell from Fulham was well-received and we spent the next few years desperately hoping to get him back; he eventually joined on a free transfer but was a mediocre part of an unlovely Neil Warnock side that fell between the highs of 2002/03 and 2006/07.

Who is destined for an unfulfilling Blades reunion this summer? Hamza Choudhury’s stock among Blades fans was heightened by his ability to look like a competent if prosaic right-back during a loan spell where he was ostensibly brought in to play defensive midfield – I’m braced for a bland second stint in the wake of a Femi Seriki sale.

But to commit fully to the spirit of this section, let’s pick out a true Blades favourite where the only question is if he can still do it at his age. Oli Norwood has been stellar in League One and may be playing second-tier football with Stockport anyway next season, but there’s only one proper answer. Come back David McGoldrick – what can go wrong?

Do you remember the first time?

Examples: John Egan, Neill Collins

Weirdly, this category has a good hit rate, albeit a low sample size: players who you can barely remember their first spell, who returned a few years later to relative success.

John Egan played a single game for us in March 2012 as an emergency loanee; kudos to you if you were in attendance for that particular away loss to Walsall. Six years later he would become the club’s record signing, a key part in our promotion to (and survival in) the Premier League, and one of the most popular players of recent years.

Neill Collins’ Blades career never reached the highs of its first time, where he started in a 2-1 win at Hillsborough less than 48 hours after joining on loan in 2006. All the same, Collins did go on to make over 200 appearances for United, arguably shepherding Harry Maguire through the early stages of his career and playing at Wembley twice. Possibly a player who would be more fondly-regarded had we not botched that 2011/12 season.

Giving you a list of players you can barely remember is a bit of a contradiction (although it didn’t stop the excellent Memory Lane podcast giving it a go recently), but here’s a couple of names that might fit as returnees. Regan Slater and Ben Whiteman seem obvious ones, having barely scratched the first team for United as youth players but gone on to forge decent Championship careers at Hull and Preston.

Centre-back Ben Davies is out of contract at Rangers this summer, after spending two seasons on loan to Championship clubs. And would former long-time Wilder target Ryan Leonard be available if Millwall go up?

Bonus round: managers

Examples: Chris Wilder, Paul Heckingbottom

I’ll wrap this up by going full circle, much like Sheffield United’s owners. Arguably this is where the whole gerremback culture starts for this club: we just can’t quit ‘em.

Wilder’s three spells are well-documented enough that I won’t waste many words on them, but it’s easy to forget that Paul Heckingbottom was also an interim boss in the death throes of the 2020/21 lockdown season before getting the job permanently after Slavisa Jokanović’s sacking.

Heckingbottom’s succession by the man he replaced makes for a bizarre streak of Blades managers, where five of the last seven bosses have been either Chris Wilder or Paul Heckingbottom. That means that over the last 10 years, more than 94% of all Sheffield United games have had one of those two in the dugout. So much for familiarity breeding contempt.

Who’s next, though? United have been a pretty unserious club for a while now, so it’s not hard to envision Wilder getting canned (again) in the next 12 months and returning (again) shortly after.

But in a world where a 78-year-old Roy Hodgson can return to where it all started for him 42 years later, let’s fast-forward to the year 2041, and the grand unveiling of Sheffield United’s new old manager: Steve Bruce.

David’s back: hooray.

The Blades’ season is cooked: boo.

In the latest Formline pod we review the Easter weekend and take stock of where Sheffield United are right now. We get into the full-back situation, what’s working (and what isn’t), and dig into a strange pattern — why United look so comfortable at 0-0 but struggle when ahead.

In this episode of Memory Lane, Ben Meakin joins Andrew and Sam to revisit Sheffield United’s infamous FA Cup tie with Arsenal, and the extraordinary (literally) decision to replay the game.

From Kanu’s controversial goal to Arsène Wenger’s and David Dean’s offer to do it all again, we unpack the fallout of a true “you’ll never sing that” moment.

Leave a comment

Words: Joel Beighton

Football doesn’t hit me like it used to.

The sheer excitement, bordering on fear before big games. Night matches with real edge. Games where there was a genuine sense of jeopardy, and packed away ends that somehow felt fuller than was humanly possible.

Part of it is age, part of it is the direction football has taken. But when I look back on my time as a Blade, one thread stands out more than the rest. My own growth from child to adult has mirrored what I’ve experienced following Sheffield United.

I started going to games in 1997, aged seven. My first was a 0–0 draw against Birmingham City. I remember being wide-eyed, slightly confused by the constant noise around me, shouting and singing from all directions. I don’t remember the game itself, which probably isn’t surprising given the result. In some ways it was fitting. It set the tone for what the next thirty years would hold.

Those early years came at a time when Bramall Lane was quieter than it is now. Around 16,000 most weeks. Bigger games might push into the mid-twenties, but those were real occasions. My dad and I sat on John Street, with a perfect view of the away end, watching opposition fans spill in and take over that part of the ground. It doesn’t feel the same now, even with more people in attendance. Maybe it’s familiarity. Maybe it’s something else.

Not long after I started going, the first real crack appeared. The FA Cup semi-final against Newcastle United, at Old Trafford. My first game away from Bramall Lane. Coaches leaving from Rotherham town centre, packed with Blades. The Trafford Centre looming in the distance, someone joking that we may as well be back at Meadowhall. A pub beforehand, rammed beyond capacity, the sound of “We are Bladesmen…” ringing out on repeat.

I persuaded my dad to buy me one of those cheap flags on a pole on the walk to the ground. I waved it constantly, in time with the almost omnipresent “We are Bladesmen…”. Then Shearer scores and the rest of the game drifts by. No equaliser. Final whistle. I cry. It wasn’t meant to happen like that. It’s the first time I remember football doing that to me.

After that came something different. More than anything else, mediocrity and boredom. The following seasons blur together. Players in and out. Managers in and out, Steve Bruce, Adrian Heath, early Warnock. Nothing quite sticks. The emotional highs and lows are replaced by something flatter. Football becomes something that just happens. A ritual without much reward.

Then, unexpectedly, it all comes back. The West Brom game in 2002. I’m nearly twelve. Chaos, controversy, something I won’t try to retell because anyone reading this already knows what happened. But it gave me my first proper taste of drama, albeit in bizarre circumstances, of football as something unpredictable and all-consuming again. It reignited something that had gone quiet.

What followed was everything you could want as a fan. Late wins against Leeds and Forest. Liverpool at home. A derby under the lights, Michael Brown’s goal, the noise almost overwhelming. The FA Cup run, the semi-final, David Seaman somehow keeping Peschisolido’s effort out. And then the play-off final against Wolves. The inevitable twist. The lesson that being a Blade always comes with a price tag of something going wrong.

And then, finally, the release. Promotion to the Premier League. I’m sixteen. A group of mates all going together, home and away. The buzz of trying to get served for a pint and sometimes succeeding. Football becomes the centre of everything. The only thing that really matters.

It feels like the start of something. It isn’t.

At Wigan, just before Christmas, it all shifts. We’re in the away end after a Rob Hulse winner, confident and singing tongue-in-cheek songs about going on a European tour. Before we know it, it is Wigan again at Bramall Lane, the last game of the season. Nobody can really see a way we go down from here. Too much would have to go wrong. And then it does. West Ham win at Old Trafford. We lose. Relegation.

I’d just turned seventeen. I think that was the last time I felt anything like pure, childlike excitement and naivety watching United. Not just because we went down, but because something else went with it. The sense that things would work out, or at least that they might.

After that, it’s different. Cynicism creeps in. It becomes easier to expect the worst than hope for the best. More play-off defeats. A drop to League One. Things I never really thought I’d see. You adjust. You carry on. But something has changed.

There have been very good times since. Chris Wilder. Paul Heckingbottom. Moments where it feels like it’s back, where everything aligns again.

But it’s never quite the same. It doesn’t carry the same weight it once did. Not like those early nights under the lights, when everything felt bigger than it should have.

I think that’s what’s gone. Not the football itself, but the feeling that it mattered more than anything else in the world.

Football fans are often seen as childish. Maybe that’s part of it. An attempt to keep going back, hoping to feel it like we did at the start.

I sometimes wonder what it feels like being seventeen today. Do the unexpected moments land in the same way, or does a culture where everything is seen and shared so quickly take the edge away? Does football still mean the world?

Leave a comment