“Food for thought”: Cup game serves its purpose for Chris Wilder as new players impress

I think it’s fair to say that last night’s game served its purpose, if only because we didn’t seem 100% enamoured with winning the game.

But as I said both before and after the game, that’s a perfectly legitimate and understandable view to have, but we need to make sure that the sacrifice of the League Cup was worth it in the end. Sheffield United were dumped out of the League Cup last night on penalties by fellow Premier League side Burnley.

But this was more a game for seeing what the rest of the players within the squad could bring to the table, and by the sounds of it a couple of players managed to do just that, with the likes of Ethan Ampadu coming in for high praise indeed on social media.

And that’s given Blades boss Chris Wilder a selection headache by the sounds of it, because speaking after the game, he mentioned that a couple of the new players caught his eye and that we could potentially be seeing them in the first-team very shortly:

“The players tonight have given me food for thought in terms of the team, and confidence that we’ve signed some good players.”

Which is all well and good saying on the surface, it’s good to sound like there’s going to be some competition for places, but they need to be handled well going forward. As new signing Max Lowe said after the game, all the players want to play, but with only 14 being able to on a matchday, there’s going to be a lot of disappointed faces sooner or later.

What about you? Did any of the players from last night stand out in your eyes? And do you think any of them have the chance of becoming first-team regulars down the line?