Opinion: Hopefully Wilder’s comments aren’t a sign of something far worse happening at Sheff Utd
I’m still not 100% sure what to make of these comments.
On one hand, I appreciate the brutal honesty with which he said it, something we’re very much used to seeing from Chris Wilder in charge of Sheffield United. At the other hand though, as I hinted at earlier, it can sound a bit like ‘sore lose’ talk, and at the same time looking like he’s finding excuses, which is also something that’s quite worrying.
Speaking after Sheffield United’s loss to Arsenal yesterday, Wilder came out firing in regards to one thing that the Gunners seemed to be doing a lot of during the game, one of which helped with a major turning point in the game, as the visitors were awarded a penalty after a foul by Chris Basham on Alexandre Lacazette.
Looking back at the incident there was undoubtedly some contact from Basham, however the way the Arsenal player went down trying to ‘sell the contact’ wasn’t exactly fitting with the initial challenge, and Wilder was not happy with it.
“There was no invitation for any of those boys in yellow to go over. Maybe I need to change my teams approach. We stay on our feet and being honest and it’s not really working for us.”
Are you worried by our start since the Premier League restarted?
But I want to go back to the point about excuses.
It’s no secret that the restart has not treated us well, with now three losses in our first three games back and only scoring two goals in the process (yes I’m counting the one at Villa Park in that tally), and whilst Wilder has talked in the past about ‘taking things on the chin’, there seems to be a noticeable change in his attitude recently, and this is just one example of it.
I don’t want the rest of this season to turn into a case of turning the blame on others for results going against us if we don’t achieve what we want. I said last week about a little bit of dissent sneaking into the camp at Bramall Lane, and hopefully this isn’t the start of us tumbling down the table having got so close to the idea of European football.
And if that does happen, I’d rather it be because of something we’ve done, rather than what other teams did or didn’t’ do.
What about you? What do you make of Wilder’s comments?