Sheffield United: Can international break help or hinder Blades ahead of Coventry City clash?

Debate about whether Blades players going away on international duty is a debate that has raged during every break in the season since the dark days of League One. It came up every time the Scotland squad was announced and John Fleck’s name wasn’t in it, for example. Bad for the player, good for the club seemed to be the general consensus.

What about now? Arguably time on the training ground is more important for the Blades than ever, as Slavisa Jokanović tries to drill his methods into his players and look for a solution to their woes in recent weeks – including conceding soft, avoidable and often late goals.

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Any plans Jokanović and his coaching staff may have had to combat that, though, have been thrown into disarray with goalkeeper Robin Olsen and two members of the first-choice back four, in John Egan and Enda Stevens, away on international duty over the break.

“The international break won’t have helped because he [Jokanović] has had less time to sort things out,” former United goalkeeper Paddy Kenny said this week.

“Once these players come back, they will only get two or three days and then they’ll be straight back into a match.

“That doesn’t give him any chance to work on tactical stuff. All the players who have gone away played against Blackburn and were disappointing.

“It will make things a lot harder, I’m sure. They are some of the players who need the most coaching and they aren’t around for it.”

Another player who Jokanović and Co. have been working closely with on the training ground, striker Rhian Brewster, has also been away with England U21s, alongside Lane teammate Morgan Gibbs-White.

The flipside to the argument is that a change can often be as good as a rest and that in the cases of Egan and Stevens particularly, it will have felt good to be on the right side of a positive result - the Republic of Ireland holding Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal to a creditable goalless draw before beating Luxembourg away.

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That wasn’t the case for Olsen, as his Sweden side were condemned to the play-offs after losing to Spain, while Brewster was given the honour of captaining England’s U21 in their friendly in Georgia – a move that United will hope further boosts his confidence after his first Blades goal in league action at Blackburn before the break.

All United’s internationals will be assessed when they return to Shirecliffe later this week, and all focus can return to club form – until the next international break, that is…

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