Sounds like he’s up for the challenge.
And at least he’s honest enough to actually open up and say that the players have discussed rather than giving the diplomatic ‘taking it one game at a time, see what happens’ kind of answer that so often surrounds teams whenever they’re seen as overachieving.
Speaking to The Star, Blades midfielder Oliver Norwood says that the team have their eyes focused solely on the prize of European football and the end of the season, but that he’s not guaranteeing things just yet:
“We definitely look at it as a big opportunity. We’ve put ourselves in a great position. The aim was to stay up but we’ve given ourselves a chance of making it a great season. We’ve spoken about it and have dreamed of being in there. We’re not shying away from the fact that we’ve put ourselves in this position. But whoever gets there will have earned it.”
As I said, at least it’s good to hear him talking about Europe in this way, because in some ways, it’s a bit of a free hit. Whilst I have said in the past that it would be a bit of a shame to miss out on going to Europe after getting so close to it, at least we know that the club are aiming for it rather than willing to settle for just beating the drop that some people predicted for them at the start of the campaign.
However, now this make the last couple of months of the season all the more important, because the club, or at the very least one member of it have tried to ‘speak it into existence’ as it were.
Now there is no turning back when it comes to Sheffield United and our quest for European football. At the end of the season, I don’t want anyone to come and say that it was never going to be realistic for us to challenge for that spot, or that staying in the Premier League is an achievement in and of itself.
When you start talking like this, then I expect you to be in a position to deliver it. So when I said that Wilder needed to be smarter with his decisions and not have us throwing away points, this is precisely the sort of thing I was talking about. We’ve come this far, let’s make sure that we do go further rather than standing still.