Winning remains what counts as Sheffield United head back to future - Stuart Rayner on football

It was talked up as Sheffield United reinventing the wheel, but instead all we were presented with was another circular object designed to help an object move more easily.

The strategic review the Blades were trumpeting had come up with a new job for the man picking the team after coach Slavisa Jokanovic’s sacking last week.

In announcing Paul Heckingbottom’s job title, chairman Yusuf Giansiracusa somewhat ominously said: “I’ve been told that’s not English football, that’s not a title any of you are going to be familiar with or even like. My response was, ‘I don’t care, I am not English and I am not a football guy.’ I am the chairman and that gives me certain prerogatives, one of which is to give the title I think best captures the role we anticipate and have discussed with Paul.”

So what was this anarchic, mind-blowing job title?

In charge: From left, assistants Stuart McCall and Jack Lester and team manager Paul Heckingbottom. Picture:: Simon Bellis/SportimageIn charge: From left, assistants Stuart McCall and Jack Lester and team manager Paul Heckingbottom. Picture:: Simon Bellis/Sportimage
In charge: From left, assistants Stuart McCall and Jack Lester and team manager Paul Heckingbottom. Picture:: Simon Bellis/Sportimage

Brace yourself.

“Paul will be the club’s football manager,” he revealed.

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But they were just words. In this era of head coaches, sporting directors, heads of recruitment and the rest they can blur the picture.

“From a board perspective, we see Paul as leading our football strategy in all of its dimensions,” explained Giansiracusa. “Paul will be the face of the football club.”

So how will it work in practice? Will he do less coaching on the training ground?

“I think that will be up to me,” answered Heckingbottom.

A greater say on transfers? No, the process will be the same as under Jokanovic and Chris Wilder.

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“The job’s too big to do all your recruiting yourself,” he stressed.

Managing the loan system?

“I’ll be less involved in that now.”

Spending time with the junior teams even if it takes him away from the seniors?

“My job is first team,” explained Heckingbottom, firmly. “There will be good communication from myself and Jack (Lester, his new first-team coach) down to the academy, an integration of staff up and down the chain and the sharing of information but that’s as far as my role goes with the academy.”

So what will be different to when he was the plain old manager of Barnsley, Leeds United or Hibernian?

“Maybe I’ll just be listened to a bit more,” he replied.

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“The football side will be approached the same way – try and win on a Saturday and a Tuesday, try and develop players and work with the staff.”

So in other words, Heckingbottom will be an old-fashioned manager – the sort of Sheffield United manager Wilder wanted to be and largely was but with less control over transfers, which frustrated the Blades’ most successful chief of recent times to the point where he now manages Middlesbrough instead.

It bucks the trend as clubs have got bigger in their reach and have felt the need to ease the workload of the man at the top, downgrading them to “coaches” so sporting directors, directors of football, heads of recruitment, whatever you want to call them, can oversee some aspects of the club instead, but it was hardly revolutionary.

“As far as the role that Hecky’s taking on, to me it just makes sense, frankly,” said Giansiracusa.

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As long as you are comfortable with the demands it puts on the man at the top, it does. Most managers would prefer it that way because as Heckingbottom says, the alternative is: “You’re judged for 100 per cent of things and you might only have control of 50.”

Strategic planning is the right thing to do. Clubs need a clear idea of where they are going, whatever direction that is. Those that do not quickly get lost, those that zig-zag from plan to plan get dizzy. Of course it needs to be the right plan and whether a strategy which seems to have a worrying emphasis on cost-cutting fits the bill is an entirely different issue but there was nothing ground-breaking about it, nor did there need to be.

“He won’t be judged just on what happens on a Saturday afternoon,” insisted chief executive Stephen Bettis. “He’ll be judged on how good the football department is.”

Bettis almost certainly meant it. But it is not true. Whatever the title, whatever the responsibilities, however much good he is doing behind the scenes, the man who picks the first team will always be judged on its results. Heckingbottom knows that. More than once he stressed his top priority was to beat Bristol City, and the focus he poured into that paid off handsomely.

Without meaning to, even Giansiracusa backed the idea up.

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“It’s not as simple as a win or loss record,” he insisted at the start of his press conference, yet Jokanovic was dismissed because “The season hasn’t progressed as we had hoped.”

Around three-quarters of an hour later we got a more realistic assessment.

“We might be top of the league now with 55 points and if that had happened I think we probably would have taken more time to develop the strategic plan and we wouldn’t be changing anything,” he admitted.

That, no matter what the intentions, is what it boils down to.

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You can develop young players to use or sell on, you can establish a “philosophy” or a “brand” of football, you can create a “culture” or build an “identity” but no matter what football club you are talking about, unless you are winning more games than you lose, nothing else actually matters.

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