Oliver Arblaster's £60million pledge as Sheffield United fans hail latest homegrown hero v Chelsea

Oliver Arblaster’s fairytale start to life as a Premier League footballer continued with another composed display in Sheffield United’s creditable draw with Chelsea on Sunday night and the 20-year-old academy product didn’t look an inch out of place against £222million worth of talent in Moisés Caicedo and Enzo Fernandez.

The boyhood Blade with four top-flight starts in his formative career looks as if he has been playing in the Blades midfield for years and his emergence has been one of the bright points of an otherwise-difficult campaign on the whole. No player on the pitch made more key passes than Arblaster’s five and that total was more than the rest of his teammates combined, as Oli McBurnie’s injury-time equaliser earned the Blades a point that was the least they deserved for their performance.

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In the space of four days Arblaster came up against the relentless pressing of Dominik Szoboszlai and World Cup winner Alexis Mac Allister for Liverpool at Anfield and then the £107m man Fernandez and Caicedo, whose £115m move from Brighton in the summer smashed the British transfer record. It would be enough to see most players pinching themselves, just months after playing with Port Vale in League One, but level-headed Arblaster is taking everything in his stride.

"Obviously you do look at these players and you watch them on TV, but I want to be one of those players one day,” he admitted. “I want to be a £60-70million player. I don't settle for just playing against these types of players. I want to be better than them one day. But I’ve got to keep my head down and keep working.

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"It's been a crazy last month. To be fair I can't even describe it. When the season finishes I’ll be able to look back at it properly and see how far I have come but at the minute I’m in the moment, and loving every minute of it.”

And so he should. He is living the dream, in the Premier League with his boyhood club and further cementing his status as a key man for next season and beyond with each passing week. Arblaster has earned - and credited - the “trust” of boss Chris Wilder but also works closely with coach Keith Andrews to develop his game further.

“Keith is really good with me,” he told SUTV after the Chelsea game. “We sit and go through clips - both mine and other world-class midfielders, to identify little things to add to my game. I feel like I'm growing ... I'm not near my best and I've got a lot to work on, but the coaching staff here have really helped me."