Sheffield United prepare to welcome back Chris Wilder - 87 days after sacking him
CHRIS WILDER is set to return for a third spell as Sheffield United manager and fifth at the club after the sacking of Ruben Selles.
The Yorkshireman is set to succeed the man who replaced him just 87 days ago.
It will be the second time Wilder, who had two spells as a Bramall Lane player, has been rehired by the chairman who sacked him. The same happened with previous owner Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad Al Saud, albeit then there was a two-and-a-half-year gap then.
Selles was sacked on Sunday, making him the first Blades manager dismissed after losing every game, and their shortest-serving "permanent" manager.
He took charge of just six competitive games - five in the Championship - and lost them all.
The Blades were the only Football League club not to win a point in August, all the worse because even crisis-torn neighbours Sheffield Wednesday have.
Wilder took his boyhood club to third place in last season's Championship, winning 92 points - two deducted for financial issues under the previous ownership regime - and lost the play-off final to Sunderland.
But the roots of his departure lay in unhappiness about owners COH Sports' enthusiasm for signings identified by artificial intelligence. COH have made four since buying the club from Prince Abdullah at Christmas but none has yet played a minute of Championship football, and Jefferson Caceres was sold in the next transfer window.
Wilder, who led the Blades from League One to ninth in the Premier League during his first spell as manager, was careful not to burn his bridges after May's sacking, and will return with a much stronger hand.
Selles had only been able to add three loan signings by the time the 2025-26 campaign started, and no transfer fees were paid for first-team footballers until the sales of Anel Ahmedhodzic and Kieffer Moore.
Nine more signings followed, seven in the final seven days of the window.
By then the rot had already set in, with Selles picking some unbalanced teams who struggled badly.
His opening match saw a 4-1 defeat at home to Bristol City, who Wilder's team beat 6-0 on aggregate in May's play-off semi-final, and by the end of Friday's 5-0 defeat at Ipswich Town his second sacking in four months felt inevitable.
He was dismissed by Hull City in May despite taking them from bottom of the Championship in December to safety.