Sheffield United: Ability to adapt enables Blades to book chance of swift Premier League return

Sheffield United’s manager – not coach, not director of anything – Paul Heckingbottom has revitalised them with those virtues. When Slavisa Jokanovic was sacked in November the Blades’ position was looking increasingly hopeless but on Saturday Heckingbottom delivered on the aim he set out on day one.

His team secured a place in the play-offs, where they will face Nottingham Forest at home on Saturday and away on Tuesday. They achieved it with a 4-0 win over Fulham, the best side in this season’s Championship.

When Heckingbottom first spoke about still aiming for promotion it sounded fanciful but this bloke deals in proper management, not propaganda.

You can talk all you like about formations or personnel but the biggest thing Heckingbottom recreated at Bramall Lane was the no excuses culture. The Blades have a fancy Latin motto “Deo adjuvante labor proficit” (“By God’s help labour succeeds”) but perhaps it should be “Just ger on wi’ it.”

When that was last the mindset, it carried them from League One to ninth in the Premier League, but when Chris Wilder then Jokanovic’s pleas for transfer reinforcements seeped out, an unintended consequence was to open the door to excuses. It is now padlocked and barricaded.

The Shirecliffe treatment room is full of excuses – Rhian Brewster, Oli McBurnie, David McGoldrick, Jayden Bogle, even the forgotten Jack O’Connell. By far the biggest is Billy Sharp.

If you had said when Sharp’s hamstring went in March’s win over Barnsley he would only play 20 more minutes of the regular season, you would have assumed that was the Blades goosed.

It has certainly been a handicap, as five points from the next five matches showed, but they have found a way. Their best players in the three comusince have been Morgan Gibbs-White and Iliman Ndiaye, No 10s used as out-and-out No 9s in Sharp’s absence.

“We’ve got no centre-forwards available but it happens, you’ve got to deal with it,” reasoned Heckingbottom. “No one’s talking now that we went without Morgan for over two months.

“Who would have thought our left winger (Ben Osborn) would be playing right wing-back and playing like he’s playing?

“Everyone’s stepped up. You can’t win if you can’t adapt.

“Going forward it’s really important the players understand this (mindset).

“I think it should be a given in every club but it isn’t. It’s a big strength of ours. We want to grow it because it doesn’t half buy you points.”

Fulham came out of the blocks like a team who despite not needing to win, really wanted to. They were much the better team until Osborn laid the ball back for Oliver Norwood in the 10th minute and for some reason goalkeeper Paulo Gazzaniga watched Gibbs-White head in.

A quarter of an hour later, the game was over, Ndiaye scoring his fourth in five games when Jean Michel Seri slipped and Sander Berge and Gibbs-White got the ball to him. Gibbs-White then won the flick-on Ndiaye pulled back for Berge to arrive on at the near post.

Enda Stevens rounding off a lovely one-touch move was the cherry on the top.

Asked how he has got the best out of Ndiaye, Heckingbottom explained: “There can’t be any grey areas, you can’t be wishy-washy.

“I knew there was so much more from Iliman and there’s still more.

“That’s my job. It’s not to be a player’s friend, you’ve got to get on their nerves at times. But I’d like to think every one of the players knows I believe in them. I think I make it obvious when I don’t and the boys in there know I’ve got their back.

“There’s going to be moments in these next two games where we have our backs against the wall, we have to dig in and do the things that aren’t sexy and you don’t write about – being in the right position, tracking that run that no one notices because the ball didn’t come but the moment you don’t track him, he scores.”

It is the names of Heckingbottom and Stuart McCall the Kop sing most these days.

“Fans see through fluff, jargon, they want you to back up what you’re saying,” said Heckingbottom. “You can be straight and say whatever you want but it’s always the actions and the performances on the pitch, the results that then follow have got the connection back and it’s important.”

The lack of fluff means when he does speak ambitiously, your ears prick up.

“I did say things I think are really important but you’re not going to hear them,” was his answer when asked what was said in the dressing room at full-time, but then the hints came.

“As a player you remember individual moments, if you score the winner that gets your team up of course you’ll remember it, you’ll have a photo of it on your wall. The players have given themselves the opportunity now to make those memories.

“We are where we should be and now it’s anyone’s. One of them four teams is going to be in the Premier League next year and our job is to make sure it’s us.”

Plenty will go against them against Forest and Wembley if they get there – surely far more than on Saturday. The club has a dismal play-off record. So what?

They just have to get on with it.