Romelle Donovan has joined with Sheffield United mindset, says Chris Wilder

The forward is on a season-long loan from Brentford, who are managed by one of Wilder's former Blades coaches, Keith Andrews, with another, Jack Lester, on the backroom staff.

Wilder sees Brentford, a Championship rival in his first spell at Bramall Lane, as kindred spirits.

And with little money to spend, Wilder's focus has been on bringing in as many players as possible who are in tune with his way of thinking.

"Romelle came in pretty early but a lot of our values, I should imagine, are pretty similar to the values at his parent club," commented Wilder. "Knowing what Keith and Jack are about and what their football club is (there's more to it than that.)

"It's data-driven and people think that it's all super-scientific there, but knowing the ex-manager as well, Thomas Frank, he placed a lot of their success in the togetherness of the mentality of the team, how hard they worked and how they played, how effective they were in the way they set up.

"Whether it was 4-3-3 when they went up, whether they went to three centre-halves in the first year in the Premier League and established themselves, or whether they're evolving as they are now under Keith – who's done an absolutely magnificent job with Jack and the coaches there – they have very similar qualities that we see in Rom.

"Cardiff wasn't easy for Rom, he's going to have to have that, but for him to come flying back, I thought his performance at Blackburn away in the cup was really positive. There's going to be times where he frustrates, he's inconsistent.

"We're trying to find the best way (for him) as well through pre-season and out of play and the support mechanism around him and the positional stuff that we're all working on and trying to tweak to make us as efficient and as good as we possibly can be.

"We've got all different ways of playing. We're not stuck in a certain way.

"It's going to be a game-by-game approach, especially up to the September (international break). We'd like to work at different things.

"The difficult, impossible, thing is how much time have I got to work on that? Just say I wanted to go and play three centre-halves or I wanted to play a 4-3-3, just for example, we play on a Tuesday night, they're off Wednesday, Thursday's a recovery day. There's hardly any time.

"The players have to be flexible as well.

"But the players will take on board what we're trying to do. We just might need a little bit more time to do it. Hopefully that will be the case in the international break with the players that we've got because the window will be shut and we know exactly what players we've got at our disposal."

At least this weekend's game at home to Wolverhampton Wanderers is on a Sunday, giving Wilder a second day to prepare for it, as opposed to the one for the games against Norwich City and Blackburn Rovers – the first lost, the second won.

And with new players joining this month – Liam Kitching came on deadline day, free agent Jordan Ayew after it – it is about more than just working on formations for the Blades.

"You're looking at partnerships as well – Kitch and the skipper (Japhet Tanganga), Sammy (McCallum) going in, Hamza (Choudhury) playing right-back, it's a brand new back four that we're putting in there," stressed Wilder.

"Ben (Brereton Diaz) coming into the team, getting up to speed, the young boy (Donovan) on the right, there's all sorts of… I wouldn't say teething problems, but trying to get relationships with certain players.

"I think everything will settle down once we get through the international break."

That follows the September 19 game at Stoke City and for the first time this season runs for three weeks, to take away the usual pause to October's schedule.

What is giving the Blades a bit more of a cushion is that goalkeeper Michael Cooper is back to the form of his debut season. He suffered behind a struggling team at times in 2025-26, and ended it in February with a knee injury, but some big saves to help secure a 2-1 win at Blackburn on Tuesday continued the trend of a much-improved start to the new campaign.

"He's making long-range saves so we're pretty comfortable with that," said Wilder, always reluctant to go overboard with praise for his goalkeepers.

"One of the boys getting back up to where he was (before last season) was one of the big things for us.

"(Goalkeeping coach) Matt Duke deserves a lot of credit as well with his input and his work that he's done with Michael. If you want to win games of football in this division, you've got to have a good goalkeeper and we've got a good one."