Opinion: Chris Wilder asked for this, now he has to make good use of it as Blades are knocked out

He wanted it, he got it.

Now, he has to use this properly.

Speaking in his pre-match press conference (via @The_Bladesman) ahead of last night’s defeat to Burnley, Chris Wilder made it quite clear that he didn’t see the importance of this game, and that he would rather focus on the Premier League this season

I spoke yesterday about how I felt that was a totally acceptable and understandable position to take, given where we are as a club and how we are trying to build ourselves slowly but surely into more of an established team, and how once we’ve done that, then we could take a serious look at the cup competitions.

So you won’t hear any complaints from me about the fact he changed the team and gave a couple of players their debuts, that’s what this competition has become.

With the fixture congestion in the first couple of months, and the games against Wolves and Burnley showing that there is clearly some work to be done, I’d much rather that the team spend time getting some rest and working on the training pitch rather than having to travel to Millwall in midweek where we wouldn’t really learn much, let’s be honest.

But now that it’s happened, and Wilder gets what he wanted by getting this out of the way early, he has to make good use of it, otherwise it would have all been for nothing. So these next few games in the league are going to be very important to see if we can get out of this slump that for the most part has stretched back into the latter stages of the last campaign.

What about you? Do you see some positives with being knocked out last night?