Ben Meakin weighs up the risks, rewards, and reasoning behind a bold decision by new ownership—and why he's ready to roll the dice on a new era at Bramall Lane.
That's a good read Ben and a well thought out piece.
Football's a game on opinions and I do disagree with quite a bit of what you say. In my view Wilder pulled off another of his miracles last season. He had a huge turn over of playing staff in the summer and was set strict spending rules by Prince Abdullah (remember only 'loans and frees'). We were clearly short and the playing squad was thin and in places very inexperienced . Yet he did what he was so good, squeezing out that extra 10% to 20% out of players that most others can't. That for me is why we won so many games when we didn't appear to perform well.
Had Leeds and Burnley not had such astonishingly good squads - Leeds had 4 quick Premier league quality wingers and that Burnley defence with the likes of Esteve was far too good for the Championship - he would have done it again, and again without the tools others had.
Even some of the sticks regularly used to beat Wilder are seeming somewhat invalid as it's emerging the signing of Cannon was data driven and pushed by the board, and the fact we had to got into the JTW lottery needing so many players only highlights what meagre resources he had to deal with until then .
We now take a huge step into the unknown. We have a very inexperienced ownership group (some of whom will probably not know much about football let alone running a Championship football club). We have an inexperienced manager who's had a patchy career record at best and we are trying out a new method of recruitment on a scale never used before. Some are excited, I for one are very nervous and feel we may come to regret as saying goodbye to Chrissy Wilder.
But let's raise a glass to him anyway. Fan or no fan of him ... In the soulless modern game, no one can say that he didn't give soul
Really good piece Ben – mirrors a lot of my feelings on the season.
One concern I have is on the assumption we’re maybe making that the owners have a coherent plan here. All of the thinking around assessing this season can make sense if they hadn’t already done that to a degree when they came in and immediately renewed Wilder’s contract. That worries me that they are a bit overly reactive and lurching between different views in the ownership – with maybe a lack of patience over the managers they bring in. We still know so little about the owners to get a sense of where we need to be in Jan under Sellés to not trigger a further change.
Wow. You think getting rid of the team that got us to a playoff final, even if it means years stuck in the Championship (and we all know there are two ways to leave the division) is a good move?
Unless the new team at least replicates what the old team achieved then it is obviously a retrograde step. It doesn’t look like a plan to me, it looks like a massive gamble at very long odds.
There's also a slightly cynical 'other' point of view to the current happenings at Bramall Lane.
Maybe the primary focus of the new owners and their strategy isn't first and foremost promotion and footballing glory. But use AI and advanced data analytics to unearth diamonds, get Selles to polish them and then sell them on for a tidy profit.
So us fans may see it as a retrograde step, if we don't better last season with promotion, excitement and lots of goals. The board, who have a business to run and bills to pay, may have a different view on what this step is and what's more sustainable.
I think this A.I. story has got out of hand. It will be used in the same way as it is being used by businesses all across the world, which is to remove some of the leg work and assist qualified people to make a decision. The owners won’t be employing people in their own companies purely based on A.I. they might use it to filter applications but they will still require someone to speak to the filtered applicants.
People are trying to paint a dystopian picture of a totally automated recruitment process, which is just not going to be the case.
Hard agree with this. To most AI, is a black box, and so many haven't really even used it themselves in anger yet.
The reality is that it can only take you so far, and needs a "trust, but verify" approach as mistakes can be made, and like many tools we humans have created, what we put into it affects what comes out - if we teach or prompt an AI, our own inherent biases, mistakes, and mis-/disinformation affect the response we receive.
Apply that to football recruitment, and you still need the eye test, you still need to understand the context for a player averaging 75 minutes - are they unfit, or does the manager like bringing on a super-sub in that position?
Even if AI acquires human-level intelligence and passes a Turing Test, it will likely have its own biases, make mistakes and consume mis-/disinformation, so we've a long way to go before it becomes the tool it is already portrayed as being.
It's a clever marketing ploy to call it "Artificial Intelligence". Your average person wouldn't care if it was called "Advanced Speech and Text interpretation engines based on parallel CPU computation facilitating ever improving pattern matching".
Anyway, it'll doubtless have successes. But I also doubt it'll be able to work out if the player has the right character, or those little intangible things that a scout can see, or whether a little guy with no pace like Billy Sharp would go on to break goal scoring records. It probably would be able to predict the likelihood of a guy in his 50s busting his Achilles five minutes into playing at Bramall Lane though.
Which is why that there will still be a human element involved. This desire to make it into a Hal (from 2001: A Space Odyssey, not Sheff Utd Way) nightmare scenario baffles me.
That's an interesting perspective. Under that model we would expect to see investment in the academy - player farm - with this investment not geared to having a successful first team but to generate profit from developing and selling players.
Totally agree with this. Wilder has been great. But I doubt he is the long-term solution if we are to progress beyond being a yo-yo club. It’s definitely a risk but one I think we have to take.
Cracking opinion piece and one which firmly puts the smelling salts under the noses of the people asking 'why'. United under Wilder were good, but we were not great. We were flawed, vulnerable and above all else, a long way from the settled, balanced and entertaining sides of the two that went up automatically. Okay, he's a Blade ... and we might founder under Selles. But we need to break the back of sixty years of being the bridesmaids now. We've seen it all under a shedload of underperforming managers and underperforming teams. The Nearly Men. Never quite good enough to reach out for trophies and settled top-flight football but always good enough to be laughed at when we fail spectacularly. Wilder is a symptom of this and his higgledy-piggledy (to coin a phrase) squad of misfits and straphangers now need to give way to a new world of expectation and accomplishment. The fans deserve it and the city deserves it. We move on ...
Excellent summary and I say ‘hear, hear’ to: “… it feels more like an opportunity to part ways, with a belief that we can become better.”
As you say, we’ll always be grateful to Wilder and say ‘thanks for the memory’ but I think it’s time to move into the twenty-first century and run the Club on more business-like lines.
Outstanding piece of writing Ben, and something I think every ‘Wilder FC’ fan should read. The facts are the facts, and there’s no getting away from them.
Wilder will be revered as a Blades legend (rightly so), and he’s left through the front door this time, but I do think it’s time for the club to reinvent itself and join the ranks of most other clubs.
Selles’ appointment, whilst still with a lot of question marks against him, presents a brilliant opportunity for someone to make their own mark in United history. Let’s hope he delivers.
Chris leaves with his reputation among Utd faithful intact, but we just fell short in a few key areas and moments. He assembled a strong team last summer with very little money spent, and but for two knee injuries we’d have won the league. He is very much ‘one of our own’, but certainly a couple of traits wouldn’t have made good viewing for the new owners.
The right moment to move on? Absolutely, imho. The new custodians have to aim high and plan for 5 years from now. A new generation, a regeneration, that gets unbelievably difficult as you get past 55. I know that all too well. Thanks for the memories Chris Wilder, it’s been emotional.
Excellent peice Ben. Only time will tell if Selles will be a success and we really have no idea if Wilder would have done it again next season. I'd like to think he would have changed it up like he did at the end of the season (albeit too late) and attack a bit more, utilising wingers and Arblaster to drive forward through the lines. However, there's a good chance as you mention, he's unlikely to change his approach at 57 and a 1000 games in.
So with that, Selles promising attacking football and with that squad we at least make top 6 with some actual exciting games (hopefully). There might have been a handful of those last season if we be honest with ourselves. Boro & Coventry at home the only ones I can't immediately think of.
There's a lot of intangibles what we do not know. I was and still am gutted Wilder has left as he was "one of our own" and that sentiment is hard to let go of. We do need to move away from that and try and do something a bit different.
Onwards and upwards & we'll carry on regardless UTB
Read your piece and despite being definitely sat in the keep wilder camp I did find myself agreeing with lots of your comments. Agree that things seemed to unravel from March, and i think it confirmed to many the worst fears we had. There weren't enough goals in the team, and there seemed to be a disconnect between our best team and that put out. Callum O Hare is a good call as he is part of our future direction, those loan players who did not get to the required performance levels were perhaps victims of not enough game time and trust being put in them.
It will be interesting how the close season pans out now. Lets hope the expected exodus does not happen and the over reliance on AI proves not to be a distraction from the required here and now recruitment needs. I do wonder (as I am sure others do) whether the down turn was in fact more due to the breakdown in board/wilder relations feeding through to a team who had a reliance on Wilders leadership rather than him hitting the ceiling of his abilities???
Up the blades. Hopefully my fears are well off the mark and we blow all comers away this year...
That's a good read Ben and a well thought out piece.
Football's a game on opinions and I do disagree with quite a bit of what you say. In my view Wilder pulled off another of his miracles last season. He had a huge turn over of playing staff in the summer and was set strict spending rules by Prince Abdullah (remember only 'loans and frees'). We were clearly short and the playing squad was thin and in places very inexperienced . Yet he did what he was so good, squeezing out that extra 10% to 20% out of players that most others can't. That for me is why we won so many games when we didn't appear to perform well.
Had Leeds and Burnley not had such astonishingly good squads - Leeds had 4 quick Premier league quality wingers and that Burnley defence with the likes of Esteve was far too good for the Championship - he would have done it again, and again without the tools others had.
Even some of the sticks regularly used to beat Wilder are seeming somewhat invalid as it's emerging the signing of Cannon was data driven and pushed by the board, and the fact we had to got into the JTW lottery needing so many players only highlights what meagre resources he had to deal with until then .
We now take a huge step into the unknown. We have a very inexperienced ownership group (some of whom will probably not know much about football let alone running a Championship football club). We have an inexperienced manager who's had a patchy career record at best and we are trying out a new method of recruitment on a scale never used before. Some are excited, I for one are very nervous and feel we may come to regret as saying goodbye to Chrissy Wilder.
But let's raise a glass to him anyway. Fan or no fan of him ... In the soulless modern game, no one can say that he didn't give soul
Really good piece Ben – mirrors a lot of my feelings on the season.
One concern I have is on the assumption we’re maybe making that the owners have a coherent plan here. All of the thinking around assessing this season can make sense if they hadn’t already done that to a degree when they came in and immediately renewed Wilder’s contract. That worries me that they are a bit overly reactive and lurching between different views in the ownership – with maybe a lack of patience over the managers they bring in. We still know so little about the owners to get a sense of where we need to be in Jan under Sellés to not trigger a further change.
Anyway, deal me in!
They renewed it with a break clause
It’s rumoured it also included a clause that it was dependant on promotion
Could be seen as very smart
Absolutely on the money Ben
Coaching was poor, fitness was poor, discipline was poor and costly, tactics were poor and the favouritism and falling out with players cost us
Wow. You think getting rid of the team that got us to a playoff final, even if it means years stuck in the Championship (and we all know there are two ways to leave the division) is a good move?
Unless the new team at least replicates what the old team achieved then it is obviously a retrograde step. It doesn’t look like a plan to me, it looks like a massive gamble at very long odds.
That's a very good point Nick.
There's also a slightly cynical 'other' point of view to the current happenings at Bramall Lane.
Maybe the primary focus of the new owners and their strategy isn't first and foremost promotion and footballing glory. But use AI and advanced data analytics to unearth diamonds, get Selles to polish them and then sell them on for a tidy profit.
So us fans may see it as a retrograde step, if we don't better last season with promotion, excitement and lots of goals. The board, who have a business to run and bills to pay, may have a different view on what this step is and what's more sustainable.
Still I wouldn't have sacked Wilder 😀
I think this A.I. story has got out of hand. It will be used in the same way as it is being used by businesses all across the world, which is to remove some of the leg work and assist qualified people to make a decision. The owners won’t be employing people in their own companies purely based on A.I. they might use it to filter applications but they will still require someone to speak to the filtered applicants.
People are trying to paint a dystopian picture of a totally automated recruitment process, which is just not going to be the case.
Hard agree with this. To most AI, is a black box, and so many haven't really even used it themselves in anger yet.
The reality is that it can only take you so far, and needs a "trust, but verify" approach as mistakes can be made, and like many tools we humans have created, what we put into it affects what comes out - if we teach or prompt an AI, our own inherent biases, mistakes, and mis-/disinformation affect the response we receive.
Apply that to football recruitment, and you still need the eye test, you still need to understand the context for a player averaging 75 minutes - are they unfit, or does the manager like bringing on a super-sub in that position?
Even if AI acquires human-level intelligence and passes a Turing Test, it will likely have its own biases, make mistakes and consume mis-/disinformation, so we've a long way to go before it becomes the tool it is already portrayed as being.
It's a clever marketing ploy to call it "Artificial Intelligence". Your average person wouldn't care if it was called "Advanced Speech and Text interpretation engines based on parallel CPU computation facilitating ever improving pattern matching".
Anyway, it'll doubtless have successes. But I also doubt it'll be able to work out if the player has the right character, or those little intangible things that a scout can see, or whether a little guy with no pace like Billy Sharp would go on to break goal scoring records. It probably would be able to predict the likelihood of a guy in his 50s busting his Achilles five minutes into playing at Bramall Lane though.
Which is why that there will still be a human element involved. This desire to make it into a Hal (from 2001: A Space Odyssey, not Sheff Utd Way) nightmare scenario baffles me.
I don't even think it will be Holly off of Red Dwarf, never mind Hal
That's an interesting perspective. Under that model we would expect to see investment in the academy - player farm - with this investment not geared to having a successful first team but to generate profit from developing and selling players.
Doesn't sound like much fun!
For most fans it's not much fun. Some will like it as they enjoy watching players develop.
You could argue it's the model Sunderland have followed.
I can't fathom out the Selles hire, and the only way it makes sense to me, is if this kind of model is adopted.
All in all though, I think that if I am right, it will be a very tough sell to the fan base.
Totally agree with this. Wilder has been great. But I doubt he is the long-term solution if we are to progress beyond being a yo-yo club. It’s definitely a risk but one I think we have to take.
Cracking opinion piece and one which firmly puts the smelling salts under the noses of the people asking 'why'. United under Wilder were good, but we were not great. We were flawed, vulnerable and above all else, a long way from the settled, balanced and entertaining sides of the two that went up automatically. Okay, he's a Blade ... and we might founder under Selles. But we need to break the back of sixty years of being the bridesmaids now. We've seen it all under a shedload of underperforming managers and underperforming teams. The Nearly Men. Never quite good enough to reach out for trophies and settled top-flight football but always good enough to be laughed at when we fail spectacularly. Wilder is a symptom of this and his higgledy-piggledy (to coin a phrase) squad of misfits and straphangers now need to give way to a new world of expectation and accomplishment. The fans deserve it and the city deserves it. We move on ...
pommpey
Thanks, Ben
Excellent summary and I say ‘hear, hear’ to: “… it feels more like an opportunity to part ways, with a belief that we can become better.”
As you say, we’ll always be grateful to Wilder and say ‘thanks for the memory’ but I think it’s time to move into the twenty-first century and run the Club on more business-like lines.
Sue.
Outstanding piece of writing Ben, and something I think every ‘Wilder FC’ fan should read. The facts are the facts, and there’s no getting away from them.
Wilder will be revered as a Blades legend (rightly so), and he’s left through the front door this time, but I do think it’s time for the club to reinvent itself and join the ranks of most other clubs.
Selles’ appointment, whilst still with a lot of question marks against him, presents a brilliant opportunity for someone to make their own mark in United history. Let’s hope he delivers.
Really great piece Ben. Very much on my lines of thought. I'm looking forward to what Ruben Selles is going to do
Chris leaves with his reputation among Utd faithful intact, but we just fell short in a few key areas and moments. He assembled a strong team last summer with very little money spent, and but for two knee injuries we’d have won the league. He is very much ‘one of our own’, but certainly a couple of traits wouldn’t have made good viewing for the new owners.
The right moment to move on? Absolutely, imho. The new custodians have to aim high and plan for 5 years from now. A new generation, a regeneration, that gets unbelievably difficult as you get past 55. I know that all too well. Thanks for the memories Chris Wilder, it’s been emotional.
Excellent peice Ben. Only time will tell if Selles will be a success and we really have no idea if Wilder would have done it again next season. I'd like to think he would have changed it up like he did at the end of the season (albeit too late) and attack a bit more, utilising wingers and Arblaster to drive forward through the lines. However, there's a good chance as you mention, he's unlikely to change his approach at 57 and a 1000 games in.
So with that, Selles promising attacking football and with that squad we at least make top 6 with some actual exciting games (hopefully). There might have been a handful of those last season if we be honest with ourselves. Boro & Coventry at home the only ones I can't immediately think of.
There's a lot of intangibles what we do not know. I was and still am gutted Wilder has left as he was "one of our own" and that sentiment is hard to let go of. We do need to move away from that and try and do something a bit different.
Onwards and upwards & we'll carry on regardless UTB
Read your piece and despite being definitely sat in the keep wilder camp I did find myself agreeing with lots of your comments. Agree that things seemed to unravel from March, and i think it confirmed to many the worst fears we had. There weren't enough goals in the team, and there seemed to be a disconnect between our best team and that put out. Callum O Hare is a good call as he is part of our future direction, those loan players who did not get to the required performance levels were perhaps victims of not enough game time and trust being put in them.
It will be interesting how the close season pans out now. Lets hope the expected exodus does not happen and the over reliance on AI proves not to be a distraction from the required here and now recruitment needs. I do wonder (as I am sure others do) whether the down turn was in fact more due to the breakdown in board/wilder relations feeding through to a team who had a reliance on Wilders leadership rather than him hitting the ceiling of his abilities???
Up the blades. Hopefully my fears are well off the mark and we blow all comers away this year...
First class piece all round from Ben Meakin. A great read, whichever corner you are in.