Chris Wilder, Brian McDermott and untimely sackings: what the Blades need to learn from Reading

Chris Wilder becomes the third manager to face the axe in the Premier League this season, striking a random, but familiar chord. Where have we seen this situation before?

When Chris Wilder won LMA Manager of the Year in the summer of 2019, he and Sheffield United had the world at their feet. Wilder had taken a gutsy Blades side from mid-table obscurity in League One to the promised land of the Premier League in only three seasons, turning Sheffield red in the process.

Just under two years later, Wilder would find himself out of work with his side rock bottom of the Premier League, and certain to go down. Despite a fantastic first season back in the Premier League, with the Blades finishing ninth (their best since 1993) and Wilder himself narrowly missing out on a second LMA Manager of the Year award to none other than Jurgen Klopp, the Sheffield United hierarchy had lost patience.

Amid reports of ‘weeks of disagreements’ between manager and board, Wilder was sacked on March 13th. ‘By mutual consent’ was the official wording of the club statement, although we all know what that translates to.

The sacking is, in plain terms, absurd. Sheffield United are guaranteed to be relegated – a points return of 14 in 29 games was frankly embarrassing, especially after such a strong first season back in the Premier League – and, out of context, this would see any manager lose their job. But Wilder wasn’t just ‘any’ manager to Sheffield United.

The parallels between Wilder’s sacking and one that had occurred only days before, but eight years earlier, were stark. Where? In Reading, Berkshire.

On 11th March, 2013 (one day, eight years before news of Wilder’s departure from Sheffield United first broke) Reading FC announced the sacking of manager Brian McDermott. The club were nineteenth in the Premier League table – one place above where Sheffield United are currently – and owner Anton Zingarevich decided to pull the plug in a last ditch attempt to keep the Royals up under different management.

Zingarevich himself is an infamous figure in Reading. Nearly driving the club into administration within two years of his arrival in Berkshire after his trust fund ran dry, the Russian billionaire simply vanished from the Madejski Stadium in August 2013, never to be seen again. Zingarevich’s exit was confirmed by Companies House on June 13th, 2014, with Reading still in the Championship and several key players on the transfer list to raise funds.

But, that’s a long story for another day.

Similarities between Reading’s and Sheffield United’s managerial departures, quantitatively, aren’t marked. Qualitatively, however, they are more apparent, in three key areas: the timing of the sacking and standing of the manager sacked, the relegation condemnation and the tactical style of each respective side that had led them to success.

Reading and Sheffield United had reached the Premier League in somewhat similar circumstances. Both sides capitalised on a previously good season (although it took Reading a fair while to do so). They both played direct, forward thinking football, although the Blades’ style was arguably more attractive. Both managers had a history with the club they took to the Premier League  – Wilder playing, McDermott managing – and both clubs had a real ‘family’ culture.

Brian McDermott, especially, often spoke of the way that Reading’s ‘good group of people’ set them apart, with a close-knit, passionate footballing community at the backbone of the club both on and off the pitch. Wilder’s promotion winning side was similar in this sense, headed up by Wilder himself and Sheffield’s finest, captain Billy Sharp.

But what about the similarities in their departures?

The closeness in the dates of their departures may be coincidental, but the stage of the season and subsequent predicament in which they were sacked isn’t.

Reading and Sheffield United, at this stage of their respective Premier League campaigns, were and are likely to be relegated. The Royals weren’t cut adrift at the bottom as the Blades are currently – in fact they were only a point off 17th at the time of McDermott’s sacking – but they had lost to fellow strugglers Wigan and Aston Villa at home, and were looking the most likely, second to only to QPR, to go down.

It should be mentioned that Sheffield United’s squad is arguably much better than Reading’s was in 2013, with more money spent on transfers in general, regardless of fee inflation. Reported £20 million and £18 million fees on Rhian Brewster and Aaron Ramsdale are sums that Reading, simply, couldn’t afford to spend – and didn’t.

Although, similarities could be drawn between the Royals’ ‘big money’ signing in the summer of 2013, Russian target man Pavel Pogrebnyak, and the Blades’ marquee deal for Rhian Brewster, both of whom failed to deliver (as of yet in the case of the latter) in the Premier League.

Given the Royals weren’t in quite as dire straits as the Blades, Zingarevich could be forgiven for making an attempt to keep Reading in the Premier League. And it is widely reported that Wilder’s departure is due to a poor relationship between himself and Prince Abdullah bin Musa’ad bin Abdulaziz Al Saud, Sheffield United’s owner, rather than on-pitch matters. However, the key point to draw on in both situations is this – Reading should have kept, and Sheffield United should have done their upmost to keep, either manager at either club.

Both McDermott and Wilder have practically reached ‘legendary’ status at their respective clubs. McDermott joined Reading in 2000 as Chief Scout under Alan Pardew, and learned his trade, so to speak, under ‘Sir’ Steve Coppell – the man who led Reading to their record breaking 106-point Championship title in 2005.

He was appointed caretaker and then permanent manager after Brendan Rodgers’ sacking in 2009, steering the club away from the drop rather convincingly, the next year leading them to the Play-Off Final, and the year after that, taking Reading back to the Premier League.

Upon his sacking, McDermott had been at Reading throughout their 13 most successful years – an integral part of the last four.

Chris Wilder made over 100 appearances for Sheffield United in his playing days. He was a ball boy at Bramall Lane, watching his father play for his boyhood club as a child. He encapsulated the spirit of Sheffield, leading the club to their 100-point promotion in 2019. He beat Pep Guardiola to the LMA Manager of the Year award, and reinstated the Blades well above city rivals Sheffield Wednesday, infamously beating them 4-2 at Hillsborough in September 2017. And, he’s left Sheffield United in a much, much, much better place than he found it in.

“He’s a manager us lower league fans love, he’s one of us who got into the big time. A very, very good player who was full of it all the time, and as a manager he’s the same. He took Sheffield United from League One to the Premier League, and that is a real mark of class to build a club in that way” – TalkSport’s Jim White on Chris Wilder.

Reading were, and Sheffield United are, getting rid of “not just the manager, but the person, too”, as Anton Zingarevich put it after showing McDermott the door.

A whole era came to an end when McDermott left Reading, and the same can be said about Wilder. The Blades are losing a man who knows the club, the players, and more importantly, the Championship. They’re placing huge pressure on themselves to make the right appointment this summer, and are losing the stability that served Burnley and Norwich so well upon their relegations in 2016 and 2020.

When Reading appointed Nigel Adkins in place of McDermott, they had to completely change the culture of the club with resources that they didn’t have. With a substantial transfer budget, Adkins undoubtedly would have taken Reading back to the Premier League. However, he didn’t have the money to transform Reading’s direct squad into a free-flowing tika-taka outfit.

Thus, Reading’s 2013/14 season was much like being led on the talking stages of a relationship – hopeful that you’ll end up together, but painfully slow, frustratingly tumultuous  and ultimately, not worth it.

The Blades’ next appointment is crucial, and a huge diversion from Wilder’s legacy will not serve them well.

One can only assume that sacking Wilder now would give a new manager, and potentially new direction, a good chance to assess the current squad and plan properly for a return to Championship life. But the Blades haven’t exactly done this, as will be discussed further on. This is something that Reading got right and wrong after sacking McDermott.

Regardless of whether McDermott should have been sacked, he was. So, it’s only fair to speak of his successor, Nigel Adkins, on a clean slate. Explicitly, Adkins was probably the closest manager to McDermott that Reading could have appointed. He too had been promoted (alongside Reading) the previous year, leading Southampton to the Premier League. Adkins was an honest, down to earth bloke and trusted the players he had at his disposal. In practice, however, he was completely different to what Reading’s players and fans knew.

Nigel Adkins is one of football’s good guys, but he wasn’t the right appointment for Reading. He obsessed over turning a direct side into the Championship’s messy ode to Barcelona, and although the progressive culture change was good for the club, the style simply didn’t suit the players. In Reading’s case, continuity would have been a good thing but, with the acceptance of McDermott’s departure, under a different manager.

If Sheffield United had appointed a permanent manager after sacking Wilder, then a huge change in managerial style would be a pitfall to avoid. So, in the spirit of continuity, U23’s boss Paul Heckingbottom has been appointed first team manager until the end of the season alongside ex-Bournemouth boss Jason Tindall. If you’re too keen to disassociate a new permanent manager with the failings of what will be one of the worst Premier League sides since its inception, then this is understandable.

In this sense, you could argue that the main thing that the Blades need to avoid is to not appoint Heckingbottom or Tindall permanently. The assistant-manager appointment rarely works. See Tindall himself, Bournemouth, 20/21, Dean Holden, Bristol City, 20/21, Craig Shakespeare, Leicester City, 16/17, Mike Phelan, Hull City, 16/17 and Steve Kean, Blackburn, 11/12. Continuity, yes, but continuity with a fresh face is arguably needed in Sheffield United’s case.

Similarly, appointing a manager who would try to turn the Blades into a passing side simply doesn’t fit them. Quite simply, it wouldn’t make sense. Although, not very much of what has happened in the last week does make too much sense.

To conclude…

Chris Wilder’s departure creates more questions than it answers. The Blades are losing a real club man who would undoubtedly be in a good position to take Sheffield United back to the Premier League, on the playing side of things at least.

In hindsight, Brian McDermott’s sacking at Reading simply wasn’t worth it. The sacking was wrong, the subsequent appointment was wrong, and the club suffered as a result. There’s little evidence to suggest it will be different at Sheffield United when we draw comparisons between the two managers.

Nor McDermott or Wilder seemed to lose support of their payers. In fact, Reading winger Jimmy Kebe put this perfectly in 2013.

“People will talk s*** about us like we are s*** and the manager needs to leave, but that’s bulls***. We’re behind the manager [McDermott] and we are trying our best. There is no miracle in football. We are all trying our best.”

Wilder wasn’t perfect – his stubborn reluctance to divert from big money deals for Aaron Ramsdale and Rhian Brewster as primary targets this summer when Ollie Watkins and Tomas Soucek were reportedly in the offing is one of the transfer calamities of the season, if true (given the money spent on the Ramsdale and Brewster more than anything). But he embodied Sheffield United as a club.

Brian McDermott and Chris Wilder ‘got it’. That’s something perhaps not valued enough, and undoubtedly something that can’t be replaced. At least not immediately.

Hindsight will probably prove to be a wonderful thing. But right now, one question stands.

Sheffield United: What are you doing?

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