'Talk of sacking Wilder a bit strange'

BBC News

12-06-2025

Andy Giddings, BBC Radio Sheffield reporter
A meeting is scheduled to take place in which the owners of the football club will discuss whether they want Chris Wilder to continue as the team's manager.All the noises from the other side suggest Wilder is raring to go and crack on to try and get Sheffield United promoted next season.It does seem strange such a short time after the play-off final, and given Wilder's successes - he was a kick of a ball away from becoming, via some metrics, Sheffield United's most successful manager - that this is even a discussion.I can understand where some fans have reservations about AI [being used for recruitment processes]. You can cite certain teams but it's never going to be the same as at Brighton and Brentford of how they use their recruitment models.Nobody outside the inner workings of those clubs is ever going to know what goes on.There is no silver bullet to recruitment and in any recruitment process, I'm sure a lot of fans will agree that there has to come a point where you use the technology. Great, that's fine.But there has to be the human element of it because there isn't a statistic in the world that can tell you about heart, fight and character. Can you do it when the chips are down?
Rob Staton, BBC Radio Sheffield reporter
Here's what I don't understand - why offer Chris Wilder a new contract in January? It seems a little bit strange that you would give Wilder a new contract and then a few months later move on.We haven't had a chance to speak to the new owners. You would imagine that perhaps if they were to make a move like this, they would answer some questions as to why, and their vision, and what exactly they are thinking here.But you do have to wonder, sometimes with owners they have some ideals, ways they want to work around things. Have Sheffield United not been this way before?Because in the past they went to Slavisa Jokanovic, they wanted to do things differently. They then had to rip that up a few months later and go back to the system that had worked in the past.Yes, Sheffield United didn't win promotion last season but they did have, by and large, a successful season after a difficult rebuild last summer. Could history repeat itself here?