Chris Wilder has achieved an important target after answering Sheffield United SOS call
Sheffield United moved onto 50 points with Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Birmingham City at St Andrew’s.
With just eight games left to play, Sheffield United find themselves ten points shy of the final play-off place.
To say they need to go on an extraordinary run from here to keep their promotion dream alive is arguably the biggest understatement of the season.
Following Saturday’s 1-1 draw with Birmingham City at St Andrew’s, United are now 15th in the Championship table. Making up a ten-point deficit in the time that remains, and navigating their way through a snaking traffic jam in the process, would allow no room for error.
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Unfortunately, it is looking as though a top six finish is going to be a bridge too far. On the flip side of that, however, it is important to remember just how far the Blades have come when you consider where they were when manager Chris Wilder walked back through the door in mid-September.
A disastrous start to the campaign saw United lose each of their opening five Championship matches, resulting in the swift departure of Rubén Sellés, and Wilder was willing to answer the SOS call to return to Bramall Lane and try and turn United’s fortunes around.
Having achieved so much in S2 previously, including as recently as last season, it was widely anticipated that Wilder would return to the club equipped with a magic wand and oversee an immediate upturn in fortunes. However, football, particularly the Championship, doesn’t work like that.
Wilder lost six of his first nine games back in charge, meaning United, 14 games into the season, had registered 11 defeats and were only being kept off the bottom of the table by cross-city rivals Sheffield Wednesday.
At that juncture, although almost everyone, deep down, always felt United would be fine and pull clear of the bottom three, relegation was a realistic threat. The decision to sack Wilder, appoint Sellés and make several questionable recruitment decisions over the summer cost United dearly.
Since Wilder’s return to the club on September 15, United have won 50 points from 33 matches, putting them eighth in the form table. Had the Championship season started on the day Wilder was reappointed, the Blades would be just six points shy of the top six.
Wilder has reached his target
Having come so close to securing promotion last season, anything less than another promotion tilt this season would have been hard to stomach. Unfortunately for United, decisions made last summer look set to deny them another Wembley visit in May.
Nevertheless, looking at this season in isolation, factoring in where United were not all that long ago, just to have reached 50 points with eight games to spare is a positive. And that is a landmark Wilder recently admitted he was mindful of reaching when he returned to the club back in September.
"We've got an opportunity to get to 50 points - from our point of view getting to 50 points is normally a guarantee of another season in the Championship which was my thought when I first came back through the door,” Wilder said, speaking ahead of his side’s 1-1 draw with West Bromwich Albion just over a week ago.
After earning just one point against the Baggies and then leaving Norwich City empty-handed after taking the lead last Wednesday night, losing 2-1, the Blades reached the 50-point mark with Saturday’s stalemate at Birmingham.
Patrick Bamford cancelled out Marvin Ducksch’s excellent free-kick to earn United a share of the spoils and reach a half century, a tally often considered as the magic number to hit to guarantee Championship safety.
The Blades, for quite some time, have been looking up rather than down, and they are unlikely to give up on the play-offs until it becomes mathematically impossible to reach them. But reaching this particular milestone is significant when you remember the start to the season United had.
With 24 points still up for grabs, anything is possible, and United will not lose sight of the top six until it becomes an impossible destination to reach. However, in reaching 50 points, although it should not have been a significant milestone at the start of the season, United have demonstrated they have made sufficient progress since Wilder answered the SOS call.