Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder reveals the difficulties he has faced during pre-season

Not quite as testing as the time, during his spell in charge of Halifax, he spent four hours inside a minibus en route to Scotland where the non-league team’s players were set to stage a training camp. Or the moment when they got there and discovered the “pristine” facilities were not quite as advertised. But with Covid-19 wreaking havoc with football’s calendar, and the decision to interrupt it with a series of international fixtures, Wilder has been forced to think outside the box as, robbed of seven key squad members, United’s preparations for September 14th’s game against Wolverhampton Wanderers are squeezed into a four week window rather than the usual seven or eight.

Tomorrow afternoon, when they face Preston North End, those still at Wilder’s disposal will take part in the final contest of the Premier League club’s warm-up programme. It would be wrong to describe it as a dress rehearsal for the meeting with Nune Espirito Santo’s side. Too many people, John Egan, Enda Stevens and Sander Berge included, will all be missing. Still, Wilder is convinced it can help set the tone for the first match of the new campaign. And so, having analysed United’s performance at Derby County on Tuesday, he wants to see a number of improvements in key areas.

“It’s difficult because we couldn’t go and blast them because they needed to get ready for this one,” Wilder said, describing how United have gone about their business since returning from Pride Park. “The lads needed to recover and then, after Preston, they’ll need to recover for the final week of training before Wolves. It’s not been a normal pre-season by any stretch of the imagination, and then somebody had the bright idea of sticking an international break right into the middle of it just to make things doubly difficult. But we’re getting there and we’re still looking for the same things.”

Wilder declared himself broadly satisfied with United’s performance in the east Midlands, where goals either side of half-time from Ben Osborn and Billy Sharp secured a 2-0 win. But after analysing the details and viewing footage of the match, he has identified certain aspects of their game plan which still require work.

“We’ll be looking to be a little bit better technically, because there were times when I felt we gave the ball away unnecessarily,” Wilder said. “Basically, I want to see us take another step forward. I thought we had a good shape defensively, even with so many of the regulars not being there, and the energy of the team was really good. We tried to press Derby all over the pitch, apart from at the end when we were working on things to see a game out - that was all about shape. But from a physical point of view, I think we were on course.”

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