History won’t be repeating itself at Bramall Lane.
Or at least that seems to be the message that Blades boss Chris Wilder was trying to get across.
When the Blades were making their way through the divisions, they were forced to sell off a number of their promising young players such as Dominic Calvert-Lewin, David Brooks and Che Adams and even going further back, Harry Maguire.
However, given the positon that the Blades are in now, Wilder doesn’t think that’s going to be a problem going forward. Speaking to The Star, Wilder talked about the disappointment of having to sell of those players,
“There’s been some (departures) we couldn’t do a lot about, Dominic, Che and Brooksy for instance. Where the club was at that particular moment, it was difficult to stand in their way. But one of the things that gives us hope is that they would have had a more difficult decision now because we’re in a more powerful position.”
What I will say though, is that they had better strike while the iron is hot with these young players because the Blades are on a crest of a wave right now, and whilst things might look promising with talk of Champions League football, history shows us that things can go south incredibly quickly.
Take a look at Hull City who were doing well in their first season in the Premier League, only to end up relegated the next season.
So if they are adamant that they want to lock up young players and make sure that they don’t let more players slip through their fingers, then now is the time to lock them into some long-term deals so that if the club does fall on bad times, then we’ll have a little bit of a safety net rather than letting them go for cheap.
Do we need to lock down our promising youngsters early?
Yes
No
Hopefully it doesn’t come to this, but it’s best to have an emergency plan in place just in case.
Why would they want to leave?