Ruud Gullit has often been labelled with the tag after he said he wanted to bring Sexy Football to Newcastle United.
Well, 10 years on, and the magpies have seen endless managers come and go and have acquired nothing in the process, and in Sam Allardyce and Graeme Souness, the football was far from ‘sexy’.
But Sheffield United manager Kevin Blackwell has said that he wants to bring attractive football to Bramall Lane.
‘Every manager has to try and build a team within certain constraints, depending on the state of the Club at the time.
‘I know in my mind that I want us to entertain and we have played some great stuff at times this season, but it just hasn’t been consistent yet.
‘For us to succeed I want us to be able to mix it up, play it long, short, forward, sideways etc, and not be predictable.’
Bryan Robson made it clear in his spell in charge that he wanted to change the way United played, which didn’t wash with Blades fans. After 8 years of Neil Warnock, and high tempo direct football, the Blades fans soon became restless with Robson’s triangle’s that got us seemingly nowhere.
Blackwell however, wants to keep the tempo and no doubt the directness will stay. This doesn’t necessarily mean the long ball, and with ball players in the team such as Brian Howard, Matthew Spring and Sun Jihai perhaps some of the quality football could be coming back to the Lane.
‘Neil Warnock had a massive influence on this club and he was a winner, but there are different ways to do it. I was with him here for a long time and he never told the lads to kick it from back to front but he was labelled.
‘In the 2002/03 season when we reached the play-off final and two cup semi-finals – and beat a lot of Premiership teams along the way – we played some of our best football for years.’
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