Sheffield United's point provided more than you might imagine

Personal jeopardy comes with the territory if you are a football manager. And if your team ships an unprecedented 21 goals in four home games then you can be, without complaint, on very dodgy ground indeed. But last week’s partial recovery in a 2-2 draw at Bournemouth didn’t just do Chris Wilder a much needed favour, it was even more to Sheffield United’s benefit in my opinion.

The last thing the club needs right now is any temptation to do something reckless and stupid - when the hierarchy itself is most responsible for this calamitous season. So this performance was a stabiliser ahead of a much-needed summit session in Riyadh between Wilder and owner Prince Abdullah

Had the Blades tanked again at Bournemouth I wouldn’t have liked to predict the consequences, for all the apparent goodwill on both sides. We’ll never know and nobody would admit it anyway, but this is football. Don’t forget it was a similar sequence of drubbings that did for Wilder’s hugely unlucky predecessor Paul Heckingbottom.

No manager can feel safe in such circumstances. But the fact that TWO managers in one season have undergone this ordeal - and two of the club’s best of the modern era - points undeniably to a wider reason. It’s that neither had a prayer of repairing the inertia of last summer when the club effectively surrendered its Premier League place before a ball was kicked.

That’s where Prince Abdullah’s focus should be. On himself. And how he, as owner, can give the club a better chance in future. He needs to own what is happening as much as, if not more than, everyone else in the operation. Sacking managers in these conditions is just a cosmetic cover-up, an escape from responsibility for leaving a dressing room so badly under-prepared.

While no-one can dispute that Wilder and his squad should have made a better fist of recent games against top class opposition, the points return wouldn’t have been any different. Wilder can’t and won’t accept relegation just yet but, barring anything totally unforeseen, the rest of the season needs to be parked up and packed off without any risk of overreaction kicking in.

Ok I’m mystified that, by comparison, there’s no apparent pressure on Vincent Kompany at Burnley, whose £100m summer outlay has amounted to sharing bottom spot with the Blades. But there is something in that to admire. It speaks of a certain resolve, a holding of nerve, a belief in stability and that you have the man to bring you back based on past performance. This is what United need right now.

If the battling point at Bournemouth has provided reassurance for the wisdom of that then so much the better. It’s the long term future that has to be addressed, not the immediate which you’d expect can only be bleak. United need the same clarity and realism about that as they showed when finally purchasing a large and attractive, well situated, piece of land for a new training ground.

That was a significant step pointing the club in the right direction. A few predictable short term results on the field should not deflect it from focusing right now on next season - and the massive on-field shake-up that awaits. For which the club, based on the main reason why it has had three seasons in the Premier League, at least has the right man for the job.