Sheffield United skipper Billy Sharp reveals the moment he truly realised what The Blades mean to their fans

Rather a chance encounter in a cafe, while he was enjoying a rare piece of downtime ahead of tomorrow’s visit to Southampton, proved to be the moment when he realised how highly his team mates are regarded by people within the city.

“I know more about our history than a lot of the lads here,” Sharp, the United centre-forward and lifelong supporter, says. “I do tell the lads about it but it was something someone told me the other day, when I was out getting a coffee, that really brought things home. There was a guy in there and when he came over to have a chat he said how proud he was of what we’d done and how much of a lift it had given him with everything else that’s been going on. He reckoned we were the best United team he had ever seen and, when you consider people like Tony Currie and Keith Edwards have been here, that’s some compliment. I don’t think the lads will realise just how well they’ve done until they get a chance to sit back and reflect.”

That opportunity will come following the match at St Mary’s - the 38th and final match of the Premier League campaign. Twelve months ago, after being promoted from the Championship, United were being told they would be down by Christmas. Fourteen wins, 12 draws and one Covid-19 pandemic later, Chris Wilder’s squad will travel to Hampshire eighth in the table and knowing that, but for a technological malfunction on the opening day of ‘Project Restart’, they would enter the last fixture of the rescheduled programme still chasing a place in Europe.

“We don’t want to be one season wonders, we want to go again and become even better,” Sharp admits. “We’ll enjoy what we’ve done when everything is over but, right now, it’s really being put on us that we’ve got to keep on building and make sure this is the start of something. Not the end.”

With Sharp wearing the armband and another dyed-in-the-wool Blade sitting in the manager’s chair, no top-flight side boasts the same relationship with its followers as United. Which, by the 34-year-old’s own admission, makes it even more regrettable that the global health crisis has forced football behind closed doors. Indeed, listening to Sharp speak, one gets the sense he feels the absence of a crowd has proven even more costly during the run-in than that Hawkeye omnishambles at Aston Villa - when a supposedly infallible piece of kit failed to spot Oliver Norwood’s free-kick had crossed the line.

“My dad’s never missed a game up until recently, my kids love coming to watch and wearing the kit, the fans have been brilliant wherever we’ve gone so it’s such a shame they’re not sharing everything with us,” Sharp concedes. “Even when we got battered 3-0 at Manchester United, I’m sure they would have clapped us off at the end and then they’ll have been screaming at their TV’s when we beat Spurs, Chelsea and Wolves. Okay, you get the odd two per cent who whenever we get beat reckon we’ve gone but 98 per cent, well seriously, the lads and myself can’t thank them enough.”

“Credit to the gaffer,” Sharp continues, reflecting upon Wilder’s arrival at the club in 2016. “He’s the one who has really bridged that gap between the club and the fans. Since the gaffer took charge, the supporters realise we can’t win every game but they’re always with us because they know what it means to us and that we’ll always give everything. I suppose they had a bit of fear as well, about how we’d get on in this division, but it means so much to hear how proud they are of what we’ve done so far.”

Arguably the manner in which United have produced results has been even more impressive than the results themselves. Five points and four places above their latest opponents, Sharp and his colleagues have attacked the division, capturing the imagination of fellow and former professionals alike with the boldness of their play.

“We haven’t feared it,” Sharp explains. “We never did. Everyone was talking, in the papers, the radio and the television, about how we were going to get relegated. We didn’t think we would, even right from the start, so we stuck a few of those comments up on the wall and had a laugh about it. We’ve proved everybody wrong.”

“People say we’ve worked hard and we do, but we’re a good team as well,” he continues. “We've got good players and, at this stage, we deserve to be where we are. But we can’t just sit back and relax because that’s when you get sucked in. We need to make sure we’re on our game every single day.”

Wilder used yesterday’s pre-match media conference to remind United, who will again be without Lys Mousset following the striker’s return to France, about the importance of finishing on a high. Sharp spent two years with Southampton earlier in his career, helping them reach the Premier League in 2012.

“It’s the perfect game to end the season with for me,” he admits. “I loved my time there and got promoted but then, because of a few ownership opinions, I didn’t really get a chance. So to be able to play for my club in the Premier League really is a dream.”

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