Sheffield United’s Chris Wilder: ‘I want to drive this club to the highest level’

For the past two years, Chris Wilder has been the best manager in England. Others have won trophies, promotions and set records but since the start of the 2015-16 season, no one has enjoyed as much consistent success.
In that time Wilder has taken charge of 107 games from which his teams have gathered 229 points. He has won two division titles, achieving one promotion with Northampton Town, a club that nearly went out of business and a second as the fifth manager in six years to try hauling Sheffield United out of League One. The bare facts are impressive but when context is added it starts to look miraculous.
Now, having taken his boyhood club back into the second tier, Wilder’s Blades are two points off the top of the Championship with a third of the season gone. Promotion to the Premier League is a realistic aim. Sitting in his office, Wilder does not talk like a man doing impossible things but rather with the air of someone who enjoyed all those victories for about five minutes before impatiently looking forward to the next one.
“We are not trying to reinvent the wheel,” he says. “Sometimes it goes well, sometimes you have your off days. We have a way of going about things. Basically we are positive people trying to improve players and teams.”
Listening to Wilder, for a moment you believe there is nothing particularly complicated to winning lots and lots of football games.
And, perhaps to him, there is not. His speech is peppered with suggestions that overcomplicating matters is the worst thing you can do: “Just simplify the game”; “we’re not coaching gurus”; “I don’t think the game changes too much.”
Occasionally the mask slips (he has studied Manchester City with his forwards, looking to emulate their near-post runs from low crosses) but maybe the secret is merely to have a good eye for a player, gain their respect then allow them to play. Or, as Wilder puts it, to “create an environment” in which they are free to get the best from themselves. Easy.
It has not always been that simple. He started his managerial career at Alfreton Town 16 years ago and slowly worked his way up through Halifax, Oxford and Northampton, with a spell as his current assistant Alan Knill’s No2 at Bury thrown in. Eventually he reached the dream job, managing the team he supported as a boy.
Having reached this point many might have been cautious, paralysed by the fear of messing up, but not Wilder. “We play on the front foot. There are teams who play on the counterattack, who sit back and retreat to the halfway line. Then there’s us and we think we play a little bit different to a lot of teams in the division. This is the way that suits us and suits the way we want to play.” It is bullish, and no-nonsense – a team very much in their manager’s image.
It certainly paid off in the Sheffield derby. United went at it from the off and were 2-0 up before Wednesday had realised the game had started. United won 4-2, cementing Wilder’s already pretty sturdy popularity. The backing of the fans is not just important to Wilder because he is one too but because he knows getting them onside removes his team’s inhibitions.
“It all goes back to the players putting everything out on the pitch,” he says. “They commit to the game, so the support gets behind them straight away. They don’t see half-hearted performances, they don’t see people that are not running around. They see players competing, putting in the effort and enthusiasm. Then, the players are free in the head to produce their best.”
The task of managing the club you support must be tricky, with emotions creeping up on logic and sensible decisions. Wilder does his best to say the right things – “You have to be calm as a manger” – but then the fan pokes through the veil of professionalism: “I’d be lying if I said the highs weren’t a little bit higher and the lows lower because of the attachment I have for this club.”
It is a slight surprise to hear him claim he “never coveted” the United job but perhaps that is what helps him manage with just the right amount of emotion: enough to care more, not enough to blind him.
Perhaps predictably, Wilder is not one for expectation management and aiming for careful consolidation. He wants promotion. “We said we wanted to get a foothold and see what this division was all about,” he says. “We have a little more than a foothold now. It [promotion] is what everybody’s after. If the door opens we are not going to turn it down but we are not getting carried away.”
The prospect of United being back in the Premier League is not particularly outlandish: several similar sized clubs are top-flight fixtures but Wilder has his favourite. “I love the Bournemouth model,” he says. “They’ve got Harry Arter who’s played in the Conference, Simon Francis, Charlie Daniels and Marc Pugh who’ve played in League One: the heartbeat of their team that have gone on to establish themselves in the Premier League played for Eddie [Howe] all the way through.”
Success is bound to attract attention but Wilder claims the phone has not been ringing with more glamorous and lucrative job offers. “And I don’t want it,” he says. “I am ambitious. I want to drive this club forward, to play at the highest level. That is my mindset and I want the players to have that. I have a short-term view, just keep going game after game. The position we end up will be what we deserve.”

SOURCE : GUARDIAN SPORTS
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