Three spells. Hundreds of appearances. More goals than we’ve got time to count. But Billy Sharp’s Sheffield United story was anything but straightforward.

In the first of a two-part Memory Lane special marking his retirement, Andrew, Sam and Jon Bradley go back to the beginning: the academy prospect sold to Scunthorpe, the remarkable goalscoring explosion that followed, his £2 million return to Bramall Lane and the strange frustration of watching a natural goalscorer seemingly score everywhere except for United.

Watch out! Neil Warnock, Bryan Robson, Kevin Blackwell and Nigel Adkins are about!

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Plus, after being described as a “woke podcast”, we share our feelings with one another.

This week on the Formline, we pick through a mixed few days for Sheffield United.

First, the positives from the victory over Lincoln. Well, some negatives too. Then, what went wrong at Portsmouth and whether a performance with 10 men can tell us anything much.

We also look ahead to Bristol City, the latest stop in a run of fixtures that still feels important if United are going to turn an uncertain start into something more convincing.

This week on Hang It in the Louvre, we’re joined by Travelling Blade to choose three images from his life following United.

There’s Billy Sharp, arms outstretched after scoring his first Premier League goal at Bournemouth. There’s a deeply treasured photo from Sunderland away, capturing the friendships and community that have come from following the Blades, including the late Jonny from Shoreham View. And then there’s Chris Basham at Fulham, an image that marks a brutal end of an era.

(We’re not reproducing the Basham injury here. Everyone knows what happened, and if for some reason you’d like to revisit it, you can choose your own preferred level of gruesomeness.)

Three very different pictures, but all getting at the same question: what is it that makes following Sheffield United mean so much?

Who’s actually progressing? Who needs more football? And what counts as young anyway?

We check in on the loanees, including Louie Marsh’s flying start at Chesterfield, Sam Curtis at Cambridge and Jili Buyabu at Rotherham, before turning to the players already around the first team.

Then it’s back to the Championship, as we preview Lincoln at Bramall Lane and ask whether this is the point where United’s kinder run of fixtures finally starts to count.

*Sorry about Sam’s audio quality!

What makes a great chant?

In this episode of Memory Lane, Andrew Hague is joined by Sam Parry and Karl McKenna to dig through Sheffield United’s terrace songbook.

It’s all about how chants spread, why the best ones are often completely spontaneous, which players were blessed with songs far better than they deserved, and why United fans seem physically incapable of keeping the same tempo for more than about 30 seconds.

We reprise this theme again. So, let us know what we’ve missed. And does anyone remember that chant Sam was reaching for at Millwall away at Christmas?

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Positivity.

With the international break offering some much-needed distance, Sam, Riley and David look for genuine reasons to be cheerful about Sheffield United: returning players, a system that worked last season, a run of fixtures that suddenly looks more inviting, and the possibility that the opening eight games were tougher than they first appeared.

There are caveats, obviously. Quite a lot of them.

But if United are going to change the mood around this season, the next eight games look like a very good place to start.

Every great era eventually ends.

In the final part of our Dave Bassett trilogy, we reach the downfall: relegation from the Premier League and the gradual sense that the spark which had carried United from Division Three to the top flight had fizzled out.

Huge thanks to Richard, David and Paul for joining Andrew on three bumper pods.

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Back-to-back promotions had taken Sheffield United into the top flight. Staying there was another matter entirely.

In part two of our Dave Bassett special, Andrew, Paul, Dave and Richard pick up the story with United winless in their first 16 games, seemingly doomed by Christmas and Bassett insisting, against all available evidence, that they would stay up.

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Last week, we asked whether we were being too harsh on Sheffield United. Results were decent to good. The table looked healthy enough. Maybe we were spending too much time worrying about performances and not enough time enjoying the points.

After back-to-back losses, let’s invert the question.

Are we being harsh enough?

Because if the underlying performances were already setting off alarm bells, what happens when the results don’t provide cover?

How do you tell the story of the Dave Bassett era? You don’t. Not in one podcast, anyway.

In the first of a special two-part Memory Lane, Andrew Hague is joined by Paul, Deadbat and Richard to go back to where it all began: a struggling Sheffield United side and a manager who initially made things worse before changing the club completely.

This is the story of how Bassett took United from the third tier to the top flight, and created one of the most beloved Blades teams of a generation.

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United haven’t exactly set the Championship alight, but they’ve lost just once, sit four points off the top and are already in a far healthier position than they were at this stage last season.

So does any of the rest really matter?

Sam, Riley and David look at the gap between results and performances, whether underlying numbers should temper the mood after a win, and whether fans sometimes need to simply enjoy three points rather than immediately ask how sustainable they are.

Because a win is a win.

But if that’s all that matters, why bother watching the game?

On this episode of Hang It in the Louvre, we welcome lifelong Blade Paul Kemp into the Pinch Wing to curate three defining Sheffield United images.

Paul has been going regularly since 1987, watching from the Kop and carrying the red-and-white flag into exile in south Derbyshire. And he has brought some marvels along with him: the Kop without a roof, the Blades without a care in the world, or so it seemed, and the sweetest taste of the century.

Plus: Kalvin Phillips, Liam Kitching, free agents, the ownership vacuum and a Norwich side whose numbers look almost the exact opposite of United’s.

Thanks to everybody who submitted a question - we’ve done our best to answer them along the way!

One great goalkeeper is a luxury. Sheffield United somehow ended up with three.

On this episode of Memory Lane, Andrew Hague is joined by Ian Parkes to revisit the remarkable early-90s era of Simon Tracey, Mel Rees and Alan Kelly: three keepers who, at their best, could each make a claim to being among the best the Blades have ever had.

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Alec Hawley

Now that the wonderfully gifted Gus Hamer has taken his cheeky smile, stunning goals, and exquisite assists back to Coventry City, the Blades have 2 big problems to solve - who will occupy the Hamer zone on the left, and who will replace his creativity and output (17 GA last season and 16 GA in the one before).

Of course, as that shows, Hamer was never really a winger on the left of the 4-2-3-1 in which he generally excelled. Instead, he’d cut in on his favoured right foot for shots, pinpoint crosses, and precise through balls, leaving the wing free for the left back (generally Harrison Burrows or Sam McCallum) to surge forward. He had a particularly good relationship with Burrows, another technically gifted passer whose quick feet and quick brain matched Hamer’s.

The £6m rising to £8m reported fee for Hamer didn’t really reflect his talismanic importance to the side, but was a reasonable sum for a 29-year-old in the last year of his contract.

However, even in the best circumstances, replacing Hamer at that fee is extremely challenging.

And we are definitely not in the best circumstances.

So, while Chris Wilder and co. apparently search for a left winger on loan to add a spark to this team, let’s take a look at what we’ve done in the two league games since Gus left.

Against Birmingham City, Wilder went with a 4-4-2 with Callum O’Hare on the left. As always with O’Hare, he worked incredibly hard without the ball (even winning a header against a Birmingham CB at one point), but he struggled to really impact the game out wide. It’s no surprise that his best moment - the driven through ball that set Patrick Bamford through for the Blades’ only clear-cut chance - came when O’Hare found himself in a central area.

O’Hare doesn’t possess Hamer’s passing range, doesn’t really excel taking on a fullback 1v1, and doesn’t really cross, so sticking him out there doesn’t really work.

Yes, he can, in Wilder’s words, “do a job” on the left, but playing him there neutralises the strengths of arguably the best attacking player at the club.

Regardless, while the defence was solid, the attacking numbers were damning - 3 shots in 94 minutes, 1 on target, and a paltry 0.29 xG.

Something had to change and, perhaps spurred by injuries to Ryan Oné and Tahith Chong, Wilder went back to the future for the trip to Swansea City.

The back 4 was out, and in its place came a sort of 3-1-4-2 (technically a 3-1-2-2-1-1) that had Joe Rothwell sitting in front of the back 3, Femi Seriki and Harrison Burrows flying forward as wing backs, Oliver Arblaster and Sydie Peck playing as attacking 8s, and O’Hare playing off Patrick Bamford as a second striker.

To facilitate all this, McCallum shifted from his usual left back role to an overlapping left centre back, and looked remarkably comfortable there.

This produced another 0-0, but while the defensive solidity remained, the Blades became a much more potent attacking force, improving from:

• 3 shots to 12

• 0.29 xG to 1.46

• 1 shot on target to 2 (this is less impressive admittedly)

And O’Hare came agonisingly close to scoring the first Blades league goal of the new season when he bustled into the box, the ball fell to him and he hit a lovely half-volley that resounded off the bar.

While that was his only shot, he felt far more involved throughout and this central role meant he was often our most advanced player without the ball, leading the press and harrying the Swans.

The Hamer zone was filled by a combination of Sydie Peck and Harrison Burrows, with Burrows in particular showing some of the technical ability that made him such an exciting player two seasons ago (92 points and all that).

Now this switch hasn’t suddenly solved everything - O’Hare hitting the bar 39 minutes in was United’s first meaningful shot on goal, and the whole thing is clearly a work in progress.

And it will have winners and losers too. It’s hard to see where Romelle Donovan - the 19-year-old right winger who joined on loan from Brentford as a replacement for homegrown star RW Andre Brooks - fits for example.

But Wilder has successfully switched system to suit personnel before; 4-2-3-1 was adopted in the first place to get Hamer and O’Hare in the same team.

And this latest switch feels a much better fit for our best players. As well as Burrows and Peck combining down the left, Arblaster and Seriki did the same down the right, Rothwell used his passing range to dictate from deep, and McCallum played LCB like he’d done it all his life.

As these relationships get more developed and the players become more confident, this feels like it really could become a viable path forward in a post-Hamer (and post-Brooks) world.

Assuming that is the case, how does that affect our recruitment? Are we really going to sign a left winger for a system that doesn’t suit one, or will we instead look for a natural backup/competitor to Bamford in the targetman role? CB is still a clear priority, and Cannon has been linked with a sale; could that free up funds for an actual permanent signing?

Maybe we don’t need to replace Hamer at all?

Or maybe Wilder will return to an old favourite, Ben Brereton Diaz or BBD as he’s known to most of the football world. He’s already had 2 spells at the Lane, first being far more effective in the PL than anyone expected (7 G/A in a Blades side that already felt doomed when he arrived in January 2024) and then underwhelming when he joined a United side battling for automatic promotion in January 2025 (also 7 G/A but in a team that was dominant rather than struggling).

But if you’ve forgotten, he’s a very different player to Hamer; in fact it’s slightly ludicrous they play the same position.

More than anything, BBD wants to get in the box and score and what he lacks in technique and creativity, he mostly makes up for with powerful running and some explosive finishing.

If BBD does join the Blades for the third time, it might signal Wilder preferring a more direct style now his long-time assistant Alan Knill has departed, and there have definitely been signs of this against both Swansea and Birmingham.

BBD’s versatility may also appeal to Wilder as he can play right wing, left wing and up front. If part of the answer to replacing Hamer is greater tactical flexibility and frequent switches between 4-4-2, 4-2-3-1, and 3-1-4-2, then you can see why BBD might be in line for yet another return to the Blades.

One thing’s for sure: what happens next will be fascinating.

Sam, Riley and David dig into the tactical shift behind the Blades’ start: far less possession, far fewer chances, a much tighter defensive shape and some eye-catching numbers at both ends of the pitch.

Is Wilder building new defensive foundations, or has the correction gone too far? Where are the goals supposed to come from? And how long will supporters tolerate percentage football if the wins don’t follow?

Some transfers happen. Others don’t. Some spend years living on forums, back pages and in the collective imagination of fans.

For Memory Lane Episode 17, Andrew Hague, Sam Parry and Tyrone James pick an XI of Sheffield United’s greatest transfer rumours: the players who were definitely signing, nearly signing, touted by ITKers, or simply discussed for so long that they started to feel like they actually did play for us.

There’s Warnock’s love of strikers, followed by more Warnock’s love of strikers, goalkeepers who never were, and defenders responsible for page upon page upon page on S24SU.

Eleven players. Absolutely no guarantees any of them were ever coming.

Let us know if we missed anyone.

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Riley takes centre stage for our annual Championship 1–24 (until his line cuts out, and Sam treads water for five minutes). He ranks every team from relegation certainties to title winners, while Sam and David do their best to pick holes in it.

We get into the Championship’s tactical meta, the strongest and weakest squads, the teams we think could surprise, and why Sheffield United might just have enough to sneak into the expanded play-offs.

Women of Steel

Covering Sheffield United Women in 2023/24 and beyond.

By Ben Meakin

Second, what’s this all about?

Positivity? United have won a cup game, Kalvin Phillips is on his way and the Championship season is almost here. Negativity? Well, there’s plenty of that too.

Ben Meakin joins Sam for a proper pre-season stocktake: what looks better, what still worries us, and just how much can change before the window closes?

The conceit is simple: Ben plays the grumpy bloke sat behind you on the Kop; Sam plays the happy clapper in front. Together, they answer your questions, test some of Ben’s colder takes ahead of the new season and try to work out where the truth lies somewhere in between.