Paul Heckingbottom backs Anel Ahmedhodzic to keep on improving after flying start to Sheffield United career

The Bosnia centre-back joined from Malmo for around £3m in the summer and has already made a quick impact, scoring his first goal for the club and making Max Lowe’s in Wednesday’s 2-1 win over Sunderland.

Although it is the first time the 23-year-old has played the overlapping centre-back role which has become a Blades trademark in recent years, Heckingbottom had plenty of evidence to suggest he could.

“The recruitment guys, Mitch (Paul Mitchell) and Jared (Dublin) pointed him out to me,” revealed Heckingbottom. “I had a good look, liked him, and then Jack (Lester, Heckingbottom’s assistant) saw the name and knew all about him because he’d worked with him in the (Nottingham Forest under-)18s.”

After Forest, Ahmedhodzic played for Malmo and his country, and was on loan at Bordeaux in the second half of last season after turning down the Blades’s initial approach.

“He decided to go back to Sweden (from Forest), got in Malmo’s team, which is no mean feat, so we had footage of that, footage of him in the Champions League against Chelsea, watched him play for Bosnia and you could just see he had the attributes we were looking for,” said Heckingbottom. “When we spoke about the role in the team it was a bit of an eye-opener what we wanted to ask him to do. He sort of went, ‘Really? I could see myself doing that.’

“He’ll not have had many assists from the byline before playing in that position but we can do it and he’ll enjoy doing it.

“Malmo, especially in the Champions League, are more defensive and Bosnia step in a lot more to win the ball back, which is similar to what we do.

“But he’s a good footballer. He’s different and I expect him to keep getting better. There are parts of his game he knows he can improve and needs to if he wants to go on further.

“We sort of knew what we were getting and that was why the pursuit started in January. We kept in touch and I think the fact we were so adamant he was for us and we showed him how we played and what we would do for him is the reason he still wanted to come here this summer above other clubs.

“We’ve challenged him to get goals and be better in both boxes. He’s scored one and assisted one so he can come back at me now.”