Chris Wilder has performed the same trick again at Sheffield United

Perhaps the biggest reason Sheffield United’s old guard lasted so long was its collective force as a group rather than individually. Yet it takes the right sort of individuals to make a group like that.

This, for me, summarises the greatest trick Chris Wilder has performed in remoulding the Blades from the rubble of another Premier League relegation. And particularly to do it so quickly. They are recognisably Sheffield United again. Not world beaters in terms of brilliance, with one or two exceptions, but a strong fighting unit packed with people playing for the team above themselves.

This is what distinguished the double, then triple, promotion side that carried the club so far under Wilder and Paul Heckingbottom. Recreating that spirit can’t have been easy in a few months of whirlwind change against a backdrop of ownership uncertainty. But it looks like Bramall Lane has some core traditional values firmly reinstated. And that has to have been because recruits were hand-picked as people and not just players.

All the key ones have contributed well on their own account so far but the reason for the team’s success has to go wider. Harry Souttar looks a leader while another loanee from higher up, Alfie Gilchrist, has clearly bought into the Wilder ethos. Kieffer Moore, too, although that has been his career-long style. Then you have Harrison Burrow, Callum O’Hare and Jesurun Rak-Sakyi, talented players working hard for the team.

Together they have set a standard that has fed into Wilder’s preference for settled team over rotation, with those on the fringe aspiring to it. There will be bumps in the road but a very big basic requirement is decidedly back in place.