Paul Heckingbottom's Sheffield United return sparks promotion claim after Preston North End praise

Chris Wilder is “delighted” to see his former Sheffield United colleague Paul Heckingbottom doing a “great job” at Preston North End - but not surprised in the slightest. The two South Yorkshiremen worked together at Bramall Lane and will go toe-to-toe on the touchline this afternoon as the Blades host Preston at Bramall Lane.

Heckingbottom was initially brought in to manage the Blades’ U23 side but the appointment was made with one eye on the future in case Wilder was to depart his boyhood club - as eventually happened in 2021 amid a Premier League struggle behind-closed-doors during the Covid-19 pandemic. Heckingbottom was handed the reins on a caretaker basis but then overlooked for the permanent job in the summer, when the Blades appointed Slavisa Jokanovic instead.

But the experiment with the former Watford and Fulham chief did not work and United turned back to Heckingbottom, who guided United from lower-table obscurity into the play-offs and only a penalty shootout defeat to eventual winners Nottingham Forest prevented the Blades from reaching Wembley.

United went one better the following season, clinching second place behind Burnley to bring Premier League football back to Bramall Lane. But amid a backdrop of financial unstability at the time, Heckingbottom was hung out to dry with a poor budget and eventually paid the price for United’s poor results after a 5-0 hammering at Burnley.

That saw Wilder return to his boyhood club for a second spell, with Heckingbottom set for his first official return to Bramall Lane since this afternoon. “He has done a great job and I am not surprised at all,” Wilder said of Heckingbottom. “He is a quality operator.

“We brought Paul into the club at academy level initially but he had a great knowledge of that side of the business in terms of young players he produced and had at Barnsley when he first made his name as a manager. There was a succession plan in there, short to medium-term, in case anything happened to the manager at the time, which obviously it did.

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“Paul took the reins and it was a difficult period at the back end of the second season in the Premier League and the club went down a different road. I am not sure that one was the right one to go down, if I was perfectly honest with it, because of the players we had at the time. And the plans were to keep everybody. If we lost somebody, fair enough, but keep players and bring some good loans in and go with the players in the building at the time and have a push to get promoted.

“But obviously, there was a change of style, manager, idea and culture. That’s not a negative way of looking at it, it was just a different road to go down. I believe it was all set to have a successful season. From a stats point of view, Paul coming in after 17 games and getting to a play-off semi-final was a great achievement.

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“I am sure that maybe if he’d had the group at the start of the season - with round pegs in round holes, playing the players in their preferred positions and going the way it was maybe set up to go, then promotion would have been achieved, or gone very close to being promoted automatically.

“And to get the group promoted in the year after was a great achievement. He’s someone I know well, and I am delighted he is doing well.”

Heckingbottom’s No.2 at Deepdale is another familiar face to many at Bramall Lane, former Blades player and assistant manager Stuart McCall, who followed Heckingbottom out of the exit door after that dark day at Turf Moor all but confirmed that the Blades were destined for the Championship again.