Can Sheffield United's big summer signing finally replace the seemingly irreplaceable? Alan Biggs Column

Anel Ahmedhodzic. Now there’s a name to conjure with.
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Besides learning how to pronounce it, here’s the biggest trick. Can Sheffield United’s biggest signing become the sort of player they have previously found impossible to replace or replicate?

I’m talking Jack O’Connell and Chris Basham, those famous “overlapping centre backs” of two promotions and a huge jolt to the tactical complacency of the Premier League.

Sheffield United dipped their hands in their pockets to bring in Anel Ahmedhodžić this summer to bolster their defenceSheffield United dipped their hands in their pockets to bring in Anel Ahmedhodžić this summer to bolster their defence
Sheffield United dipped their hands in their pockets to bring in Anel Ahmedhodžić this summer to bolster their defence
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Even a couple of years on, and with the embattled O’Connell having not played since late September of 2020, your mind strays back … not so much to what might have been but to what still could be.

Why? Because essentially it is still the way the Blades are best set up to play; the way Paul Heckingbottom successfully reverted to last season; the way he clearly wants to attack this season.

The one missing ingredient - and the biggest miss of any United player in recent years - has been O’Connell. No-one was more fundamental to their success.

That’s rare to say of a defender, but in truth he wasn’t. He was an entire bulldozing left hand-side of the team, such a truly special kind of player that his long worrying absence has been a collective, as well as personal, tragedy.

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Basham has been playing Chris Wilder’s United way in mono without that accompanying stereo blast from the opposite flank.

Now I don’t want to lay too much at the door of Ahmedhodzic, still a relatively young man at 24, albeit an accomplished performer.

And in truth I don’t know very much about him, other than clips and comments.

But when he listed, among his own strengths, as being “good with the ball and fast” I sat up.

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As I did when ex Blade turned pundit Kevin Gage declared himself “hugely impressed”, citing Ahmedhodzic as being “very composed on the ball with great technique”, besides his physical attributes.

Is this a man who can replace a missing dimension at Bramall Lane?