We know and love Chris Wilder. As fans, we’ve written the book on him. Quite literally, with a special edition of DEM Blades fanzine dedicated to his service. We knew his backstory before commentators began repeating it ad nauseam. And we know only too well how we can create a team capable of promotion, not only to the Championship but to the top-flight as well.
But here’s a question, after last night’s draw with his Boro side:
Wilder
What’s the score?
Wilder, Wilder
What’s the aggregate score of results from games played between Sheffield United and one of the teams you’ve managed?
Chris Wilder’s Oxford
David Cameron, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak, and yes, Chris Wilder. Oxford has a distinguished record of leaders, potential leaders and downfalls.
Back when Labour joined picket lines, when away kits meant a different colours to home kits, and nobody had heard of sourdough bread, Nye Bevan said:
The Tories, every election, must have a bogeyman. If you haven't got a programme, a bogeyman will do.
It’s an exaggerated aphorism that applies to football too. Remember Chris Wilder’s best bogeymen? From “selfish” Jurgen Klopp to “psychologists, do-gooders and lefties,” and my personal favourite, Norwich City’s coach driver:
Bogeymen are a brief digression away from the real story here, and that is one of bogey teams. Before yesterday’s game, I was convinced that Sheffield United were Chris Wilder’s bogey team. So I did a bit of digging, a bit of remembering and more digging. And here’s the answer.
2011
On 12 November 2011, more than a decade ago, Wilder had no recourse to bogeymen when his Oxford team were beaten 3-0 by Danny Wilson’s Sheffield United. Two goals from Ched Evans and one from Ryan Flynn - his first for the club - secured victory for the Blades that day. This was the first professional ‘Sheffield United vs Chris Wilder fixture’.
Aggregate score: Sheffield United 3 - 0 Chris Wilder
Let’s have it right, the 2011 Danny Wilson side was a strong outfit. We should’ve been promoted that year; we all know why we weren’t, and the low lows that followed would one day be righted with the high highs of the Wilder era. Before all of that could take place though, there was a reverse fixture to be played.
2013
A new first. This would be the first time the Blades had ever turned out in a professional game at the Kassam Stadium; the second ‘Sheffield United vs Chris Wilder’ fixture. Danny Wilson was still in charge, and our starting eleven included Harry Maguire, Kevin MacDonald and Jamie Murphy.
But it was a Tony McMahon freekick, followed by goals from Nick Blackman and Dave Kitson, that created the mirror-perfect 3-0 result.
Aggregate score: Sheffield United 6 - 0 Chris Wilder
By all accounts, this was a flattering outcome. Danny Wilson admitted the game was closer than it looked on paper. Speaking of paper, there were only two players on the teamsheet that would wind up playing for Chris Wilder at Sheffield United: George Long and Oxford’s Jake Wright.
At the time, it might have been the Blades’ joint largest margin of victory of the season, but the tenets of Tuftyball had been on display both on the pitch and off it. Post-game, Chris Wilder said:
I told my lads beforehand that if Sheffield United won this game I wanted them to have to go through us, over us and around us.
And that’s precisely what transpired. Tufty blood and thunder. It was only thanks to some horrible misses by the Oxford forwards that the Blades didn’t go behind. Yes, this was a loss for Wilder, but there were signs that so many of us overlooked.
He left Oxford for Northampton a year later, where he brought instant success with automatic promotion to League One. Then he left Northampton for Sheffield United, where he brought, first, a promotion to the Championship, second, a promotion to the top-flight, and third, a ninth-place finish in the Premier League.
Now he’s at Middlesbrough, and, more than any other advantage, the Wilder factor is why they are so fancied for a successful season in the Championship.
But what about the score? What about bogey team potential?
Chris Wilder’s Middlesbrough
2021
In September, the Blades went down 2-0 against a Middlesbrough side managed by ex-manager Neil Warnock. Unlike Wilder, I knew Warnock had a relatively healthy record against his former club. In fact, if anything, a Warnock eleven was a bogey team for the Blades.
Neil Warnock vs Sheffield United
Played 14 | Won 6 | Drawn 5 | Lost 3 | GF 23 | GA 16
But Warnock failed to live up to his own high standards at Middlesbrough and was replaced by Chris Wilder in November 2021. And this made possible the first fixture between Sheffield United and a Chris Wilder eleven for eight years.
The game was scheduled for lunchtime on New Year's Day. Wilder was 6-0 down on aggregate but unbeaten in six games in the Championship with five wins and one draw. Wilder’s Boro looked a daunting prospect. For him, this was an ideal moment to start making inroads into the under-considered and over-engineered bogey team narrative against a Blades team who had stuttered in the first half of the season under Slaviša Jokanović.
Remember what happened?
At the time, some Blades fans smelled a rat. Wilder getting the game cancelled during a spell of congested fixtures. But with Boro in great form, I failed then, and I still fail now, to see any reason why our opponents would’ve wanted the game postponed. Of the Covid wave at the Boro training ground, Wilder said:
Personally, in my twenty years as a manager, starting off at non-league…I've never experienced anything like I've experienced in the last 48 hours. Never.
Whether there was anything untoward or not, the postponement only played into our hands. Because months later, on 8 March 2022, under the lights at Bramall Lane, the Blades gave Boro a good thumping. The best thumping!
2022
It was Wilder’s first return to the ground where he had proved and achieved so much. Blades fans, for the most part, showed their thanks with terrifically deserved applause before the game. This was followed in kind by one of the best displays under Paul Heckingbottom.
Boro scored only thanks to an unlikely goalkeeping error. But it wasn’t enough to trouble us. Sander Berge, Billy Sharp, Jack Robinson and a deft back-heel volley from Morgan Gibbs-White (my favourite goal of the season) secured an important win.
Aggregate score: Sheffield United 10 - 1 Chris Wilder
All of that set us up for yesterday’s game. A chance for the Blades to cement a record against, to my mind, one of the top English managers in the game.
Before 2 p.m on 14 August, Chris Wilder had faced 107 different football teams in professional games. Of the 107 teams, he’d taken at least a point against 99 of them. The eight teams who had consistently beaten Chris Wilder were as follows:
Leicester City (P5, W5), Liverpool (P4, W4), Manchester City (P4, W4), Southampton (P4, W4), Sheffield United (P3, W3), Stockport County (P2, W2), Rushden & Diamonds (P1, W1), Leicester U21s (P1, W1)
It was close. It was nippy. It was niggly. The Blades looked more assured on the ball and more comfortable in our shape, until we didn’t. Our shaky moments proved costly, and so did Boro’s. At 2-1 up, I think Paul Heckinbottom’s decision to bring on a not-yet-up-to-speech McBurnie was costly. We looked leggy in the heat. And, in the end, I think 2-2 was just about fair. But what of the record?
We have now dropped out of the list of eight clubs who have consistently beaten Chris Wilder teams. In brighter news, we join the list of forty-two clubs that Wilder has failed to beat in his managerial career (just don’t ask me to list them).
That leaves the aggregate score in a relatively healthy position for the Blades, with no prospect of Wilder overturning it this season, barring a real embarrassment. And that leaves one question, or more accurately, two of them:
Wilder
What’s the score?
Wilder, Wilder
What’s the aggregate score of results from games played between Sheffield United and one of the teams you’ve managed?
Sheffield United 12 - 3 Chris Wilder
Chris Wilder vs Sheffield United
Played 4 | Won 0 | Drawn 1 | Lost 3 | GF 3 | GA 12
Sam Parry is the co-founder of DEM Blades fanzine and Commissioning Editor of The Pinch. Inside work he writes speeches, and outside of work, he wonders whether he’s ever eaten a truly greasy chip butty.
Excellent research, Sam - thanks for some intetesting reading. I'd completely forgotten the rant against the Norwich coach driver - thanks for the reminder of Wilder's wit and wisdom!