Sheffield United: How honest approach of Paul Heckingbottom has sharpened Blades' focus in 12 months

It is probably fair to say that when Heckingbottom was handed the job, they were not exactly dancing in the streets of the Steel City. Now they sing his name almost every game.

He had done it before, as a caretaker, when the Blades slid out of the Premier League the previous season. Inheriting a hopeless situation, he did an okay job, winning three of his 11 games and blooding youngsters such as Iliman Ndiaye and Daniel Jebbison.

At the end of the season, though, the board decided they needed someone with more Championship pedigree and opted for Slavisa Jokanovic. It did not work.

With the side 16th in a table they had been expected to win promotion from, Jokanovic was sacked.

Eighteen other Championship managers who were in post that day have moved on since.

Some cynics saw Heckingbottom as a cut-price choice by the "Poundland Prince" who owned the Blades but whatever the motivation, it was an inspired choice.

Heckingbottom may not have been able to drag his team to promotion – knocked out of the play-offs at the semi-final stage after a penalty shoot-out at Nottingham Forest – but he has won 27 and drawn 12 of his 52 games, and his side sit in the automatic promotion places.

So what has he done to transform a club in the doldrums for much of 2021?

Having been at Bramall Lane since 2017, Irish wing-back Stevens thinks it has been as simple as getting back to the basics which were at the heart of their success under Chris Wilder.

"It was just about identity, he brought our identity back," he explains. "He brought his own methods and his own training schemes and I think he's just grown players. A lot of our lads have drastically improved since he's come in the door.

"He strengthened the squad where it needed to be strengthened. We have a great squad this season and we're just pushing now to achieve something."

Jokanovic's time was marked by uncertainty as the Serbian experimented with formations in search of a winning formula. Heckingbottom brought things back to a slight modification of the shape Wilder used, almost always sending his team out with three at the back, four or five in midfield and the rest up front.

"Slav probably needed more time to implement his ways and his philosophy and it just wasn't really working," acknowledges Stevens. "It might not have worked for a long time, no one would have known.

"The club felt like they needed to change and Paul came in and his record when he first came was nothing short of unbelievable, especially at home. We were unlucky to lose in the play-offs last season.

"It's time spent on the training pitch and in the meeting room, it's understanding. A lot of the lads now understand what they're doing when they go out onto the pitch.

"He'll break it down to the tactics of how we're going to hurt teams, how other teams will look to hurt us and how we're going to defend against it and it's been working.

"He's honest, he'll come to you and you can go to him whenever you want and have an honest chat. That's what players need."

Heckingbottom is certainly no softly-softly manager. Training is notoriously tough and, Stevens says, all the more enjoyable for it.

"We're all working hard together," he reflects. "It's not just a few of us are working hard, we're not carrying people. We're all putting in the hard work and graft, staff included. We're all here to achieve something."

But it is not just the manager's name they sing because this is no dugout dictator. Rather harshly on Jack Lester, the third member of the coaching trio, the terrace ditty hails "Hecky and Stuart McCall".

"I would throw Dukey (Matt Duke), the goalie coach, and all the staff in there," says assistant manager McCall. "They're on the ball with everything and take a lot of pride in what they do. It's all about standards and they know if their standards are not good enough they'll get tweaked out, like us all.

"We can't expect the players to get to a standard if the staff aren't. It's not just Hecky, myself and Jack, there's a really good support staff.

"You've got to make sure you can have a trust in your staff and give them roles and responsibilities and Hecky does that really well because he trusts the staff that work for him.

"But you've got to be on your job because if not, there's always other people that will take your place."For all that the first year has been a good one, the Blades remain in the Championship. Settling for that will not wash at Bramall Lane.

"We don't want to look back on that," says Stevens of the last 12 months, "We want to look forward. We've got off to a good start and we just want to keep it and push on."