Reality check for Blades will not halt promotion bid

SHEFFIELD United fans should not expect high-profile signings this season but can look forward to returning to the Championship, says the club’s newly-appointed chief executive.

Speaking exclusively to the Yorkshire Post on his first day at Bramall Lane, Julian Winter said the Blades needed a “sense of reality” after a disastrous campaign which led to relegation.

A reliance on expensive loan players and a lack of coherence in the squad was blamed when United dropped into League One, just four seasons after tasting Premier League glory.

Winter has taken over from previous chief executive Trevor Birch, who admitted in the summer that the Blades had “got it wrong” and admitted that the team’s wage bill had been too high.

Birch stepped down from the role in May, shortly after the departure of manager Micky Adams but Winter was reluctant to pass harsh judgement on those who had gone before.

He said: “It’s a very difficult thing to comment on other people’s work. I am not going to come here and be hyper-critical of the previous management.

“In all organisations, mistakes are made, that will happen regardless, but clearly the on-the-field performance was negatively affected by the number of managers.

“There were four in a year and that is never a good sign, it results in a negative position. I could say a bit more but it is very difficult on day one without the detail of the organisation.

“The club got relegated, it’s now got to have a sense of reality. But we need to try and get people to think postively about the place and then things will start to develop. Let’s not be naive, for me to say I can bring a sense of positivity is naive, but I think we can see already that the loan players have gone and there is a move towards young players.

“The word is balance, the team now looks balanced where it had been over-reliant on one area.”

Winter said his priority was to pull all the elements of Sheffield United, both on and off the field, together in a bid to build a club which could challenge in the top-flight again. He said: “The chairman has already made it clear that there is a direction of travel, which is to refocus and get everybody on the same page.

“That is the way that clubs become successful. Everybody here would want to see Sheffield United back in the Premier League, but also operating sustainably.

“That is where the sense of reality has to come in – things like that don’t happen overnight. The manager, Danny Wilson, is on the same page and is fully conversant with the challenge.

“Even before my arrival there have been a number of changes, but it doesn’t take much to realise the club has spent far too much on football but has not achieved with the resources it has.

“The playing budget is still one of the biggest in League One, but that budget has now been set for this year and for me it is about working with Danny on the playing side.

“Sheffield United is now going to be recruiting the sort of players that suit that profile.”

Winter said that living within its means was not just right for Sheffield United but “right for football” and said other clubs would face similar challenges in the face of oncoming regulation.

He added: “All clubs are going to have respond to it. The work that has been going on here over the summer has already started to push Sheffield United in the right direction.”

The new Bramall Lane chief, who made almost 100 appearances for Huddersfield in the 80s, was optimistic on the prospects for this term and said he understood the frustration of fans who could not understand how their club had fallen so low.

He pointed to the Blades’ positive start to the season, which sees them joint top of League One with Charlton Athletic, and predicted an immediate return to Championship football.

Winter said: “It is a clear objective. You won’t get a mission statement from me, but there is plenty to do at this club both on and off the field.

“It has huge potential and a huge support base and if we get to the point where we have cut our cloth accordingly, that will deliver us huge advantages.

“The business challenge is to make a fairly small and complex organisation work better because we have the hotel, business centre, gym, state-of-the-art academy and they need to work together. A lot of money has been spent on the infrastructure here – the stadium is as good as it gets. We will need all that when the club gets promoted.”

Winter was born and brought up in Huddersfield and played for his hometown team in the 1980s. He also signed for the Blades in 1989 but never played due to injury. He was previously chief executive at Championship side Watford, a job he said had given him “the right experience” to face the Blades challenge.

At the end of last season, Scott McCabe, a director of the club’s PLC board and son of owner Kevin McCabe, said the club now had to “try something different” in its quest for success.

Winter said: “Whether I am the something different remains to be seen, but the direction of travel has been set and that provides clarity for everyone that works here. Everyone can sit around and talk about strategy until they are blue in the face – now it is about doing.

“The strategy to improve the club’s infrastructure has been achieved. The problem for this club is that is has failed on the field. It has had significant investment in its team, more than enough investment to succeed.”