Sheffield United’s performances in the Premier League this season have put them in the hunt
for European football – for a newly-promoted side many thought would be mired in a relegation
struggle, Sheffield United have played with huge tactical ingenuity and skill as well
as work ethic and organisation. Chris Wilder and Alan Knill, the assistant manager who
has overcome his run-in with a squirrel to become one of the most tactically innovative
number two’s in the game, have forged a team greater than the sum of its parts by
developing and refining an approach that gets the most from its players, producing excellent
football and results.
While Knill has been credited with the tactical innovations most associated with United, not
least the ‘overlapping centre-backs’ thing, Wilder is also an extremely progressive and
thoughtful manager, capable of coaching a complex system and encouraging enormous effort
and intelligence from his players, some of whom have been at the club since its League
One days. Wilder and Knill implemented many of the approaches now being widely lauded
when Sheffield United were in League One, as well – while the club’s promotion to
the Premier League means more people are now aware of their style of play, the management
and squad have been working on it since 2016/17.
Sheffield United’s recruitment is also worth a brief mention. Although the club have spent
£62m this season, according to Transfermarkt, with significant sums spent on Sander Berge,
Oli McBurnie, Lys Mousset, and Callum Robinson, the spine of the team was assembled for a
relatively small amount. Indeed, looking at the players who have appeared 20 or more times
this season, at the time of writing, United spent just over £7m on them, not including
fees for loans or signing bonuses.
In addition, David McGoldrick, a free from Ipswich in 2018/19, and John Fleck, a free
from Coventry in 2016/17, have been integral to the team’s rise to the Premier League
and their performances there. While some of this is down to good recruitment, there’s
no doubt that Wilder’s ability to coax top level performances from players acquired for
low prices from inauspicious clubs is yet another part of his excellence as a manager.
Sheffield United’s defensive shape is a 5-3-2, with a passive mid-block that flexes
wide to pin against the touch-line should the opposition try to play around the block.
This keeps the shape compact, as the downside to a 5-3-2 is that it gets progressively narrower
higher up the pitch and therefore could allow the opposition ease of transition both wide
and centrally if the shape is disjointed. If pressing at all, the strikers will press
the space to cut off passing lanes rather than aggressively press the man in possession
or the likely receiver, while the rest of the team shifts behind them.
The advantage of this is that Sheffield United can orientate towards the ball, shifting from
side to side to maintain cover, and it requires teams to play through the block, rather than
play over it – obviously, with three centre backs and a commanding ‘keeper, United have
an advantage when contesting longer balls. The absence of a regular high press means
that this compactness isn’t disrupted by the first line of defence, or first two lines,
chasing the ball too much.
However, Sheffield United will press higher on occasions. They maintain the 5-3-2 defensive
shape but there is some pressing from the strikers and one or two central midfielders.
This is typically done against teams that try to play out from the back but don’t
do it that well, such as against Bournemouth or West Ham. Here the strikers will man-orientate
and press the players in possession, with a central midfielder stepping up to press
the dropping pivot player. If the ball moves wide, then the block is reformed.
This is generally Wilder’s plan B, as Sheffield United prefer to sit off somewhat, clog the
middle, then defend aggressively out wide, but they are flexible. Nonetheless, just as
they like to build their attacks by creating overloads out wide, they like to defend in
those areas too, using the touchline as another defender, using the numbers their formation
affords to cluster around players and win back the ball. The fitness and cohesion of
the team also means that they are not only able to then transition well into attack,
but also that the midfield can drop deep to bulk out the middle of the pitch and mean
that even if the opposition get in a cross, there are plenty of defenders there to repel
the attack.
Sheffield United’s midfielders are also excellent auxiliary defenders centrally and
wide. They can either move quickly out to assist with defending the wide areas of the
pitch, or array themselves intelligently to block infield passes when the ball moves wide.
This means that, either way, Sheffield United can both keep a defensive shape and flex their
positioning to maximise opportunities to win back the ball and transition.
This superbly drilled defence has paid huge dividends for Wilder and the side. After 27
games played, Sheffield United have, according to Understat, conceded an xG Against of 34.45,
the seventh best in the league. But they have only conceded 25 goals, the second best of
any Premier League side after Liverpool, and their xG Against differential is +9.45, the
second best after Newcastle United. This means that they have conceded almost 10 goals fewer
than the quality of shots they have given up would suggest – a lot of this is down
to Dean Henderson who is now arguably the best English goalkeeper around. Nonetheless,
defence is a unit-driven effort, and Wilder and Knill’s coaching, and the intelligence,
responsiveness, and hard-work of the players, has created one of the meanest defences in
the league.
In attack, Sheffield United’s 5-3-2 transitions, as one would expect, into a 3-5-2, but this
is a very fluid shape and this is down to the tactical innovation that everyone associates
with Sheffield United – the ‘overlapping centre-backs’. As Jonathan Wilson observed
in a Guardian piece in September 2019:
“The notion of central defenders stepping out from the back is not new and has had numerous
iterations, from the Danubian centre-halves of the 1930s through liberos such as Franz
Beckenbauer and Gaetano Scirea to Louis van Gaal’s observation in the 90s that one of
his central defenders had to be a playmaker because it was the only position on the pitch
that was regularly afforded time.”
But Wilder and Knill have not only done this with players who one would not normally bracket
with the likes of Beckenbauer, but he’s sent them into wide areas, with his wing backs
either staying wide to assist the overload, or drifting infield to bulk out the midfield.
It helps that Chris Basham was a defensive midfielder towards the beginning of his career,
but this is a combination of imagination and coaching that’s hard to equal. The central
centre back, usually John Egan, is a kind of fixed sweeper, the player one might expect
to join midfield but bulk out numbers. But instead it is Basham and Jack O’Connell
who push up and wide.
This affords two advantages: firstly, it helps to generate overloads, as an additional player
will crop up on the flank, to add to the wing back, at least one midfielder, and even a
striker drifting over, so Sheffield United can easily overpower one side of the pitch.
It also causes the opposition attackers or midfielders, who would usually be the players
going man-for-man with a centre back, to either track that run, thereby making it harder for
them to then counter attack because they are now in their own defensive zone, or not track
it and expose their defence to being overloaded.
While Sheffield United like crossing the ball, partly due to their ability to conjure overloads,
they will also work the ball into wide spaces but then use runners to work the ball towards
a shooting position with carries and passes; they don’t just get it wide and lump it
in. Partly, this is due to the wing backs, the excellent Stevens and Baldock, who will
regularly leave their flank and cut inside. But with technical midfielders like Norwood,
Fleck, and Lundstram, as well as new arrival Berge, and willing, mobile forwards, United
can create real issues for opposition defenders by pulling them out of position or making
runs that create space for others.
These methods are all geared towards disrupting the opposition defensive structure by having
players making runs from in to out or vice versa, but crucially from a position where
the expectation is that they would not make that run: hence centre backs on the overlap,
or wing backs appearing at the top of the penalty area.
The midfielders will often appear in the half space and then either chip a ball in towards
a runner coming into the box at a diagonal, or pass and move to receive the ball while
driving in field. But this is only possible because the wide players have pulled the opposition
defence towards them, and there are runners causing issues for the central defenders.
Sheffield United are capable of extremely intricate pass and move football in and around
the box, carried out with a pace and directness that poses teams real problems – they are
also proficient at set pieces and can, if needed, go direct. It’s a testament to Wilder
and Knill’s coaching that the team can construct complex attacking moves while also keeping
themselves solid in defence, with players superbly drilled at covering spaces and avoiding
counters.
Sheffield United are a very impressive team at both ends of the pitch, playing intelligent
football that shows real intent and innovation, and upsetting a lot of pre-season assumptions.