Chris Wilder

Chris Wilder
Image from: freelargeimages.com

Christopher John Wilder





Current Club/Country: Sheffield United.

Previous Clubs/Countries: Northampton Town, Oxford United, Halifax Town, Alfreton Town.



Honours: English League One 2016/17.





Wilder had relative success before getting the gig of managing the team he had played for and supported as a boy. At the time the Blades were in League One and in financial difficulty, but Wilder quickly turned things around, despite having no money to spend to build a team.



His team scored 100 points and won League One at the first time of asking and then took the Championship by storm, finishing second and once more gaining promotion. Now in the Premier League and once more they are massively overperforming, in large part due to his tactical ploy of 'overlapping centre-backs', which create an overload on the flanks for his team.



Added to that, Wilder has the gift of motivation, the ability to get his players to give that extra 5% more than they had done previously during their careers. You will never see a player in his team giving anything less than their maximum effort. No one coasts in his team.



The big test for him will come when teams work out how to deal with his tactical system and he needs to alter it to stay competitive. That will happen in time, as every tactic and system has a weakness to be exploited and needs tweaking to remain on top and ahead of the rest.



The worry right now is that he may have taken the club as far as he can do, as his eye for a cheap bargain is not going to win trophies. You need to add more quality, something he seems to struggle to spot, judging by his record signing being McBurnie, who is nowhere near good enough for the club to go any further.



That will be the final test of him, to either pick out the right players to improve his team or find the right people to find them for him. Recruitment is one of the key factors in a team's success in the long term.



Requested by Ed666