An inside story from Gregor Robertson in today’s Times.
The narrative about Chris Wilder is pretty well versed by now. Hard yards in the lower leagues. Promotions from all four divisions below the top flight. Almost two decades in the dugout without being sacked. Old-school values. Bold, penetrative, “Front-foot football”, as he calls it. All of which is true. And, when this season eventually ends, the Sheffield United boss will surely be a frontrunner for manager of the year. By any measurement, the 52-year-old would deserve it. But I must be honest: having played for Wilder, I never saw this coming.
Perhaps that reflects poorly on me. Perhaps it reflects the circumstances. During those 12 months at Northampton Town, between January 2014 and January 2015, the margins were gossamer thin. It was a year, upon reflection, which revealed Wilder’s biggest strengths: his capacity for motivating, his resourcefulness in the transfer market, his bravery under pressure. But, having said that, there’s no doubting how turbulent a time it was.
When I signed for Northampton I’d been without a club for a fortnight, training on my own at a local park, waiting for a call. My contract had been cancelled by mutual consent at Crewe Alexandra. Wilder had just left Oxford United for Northampton, and the security of a longer deal — a ballsy move given that he was leaving one team chasing the play-offs for another rooted to the foot of League Two. I was one of a host of 30-somethings recruited in a frantic final week of the transfer window. Valuable experience, yes. But more than that, he knew we would fight and scrap for our own futures in tandem with the club’s. It was a canny move — and it worked. Just.
We stayed in the bottom two until the final week of the season. Then Wilder handed a home grown 17-year-old, Ivan Toney — later sold to Newcastle United, now of Peterborough United — his full league debut on the penultimate weekend away at Dagenham & Redbridge. He bagged a brace in a 3-0 win. He scored another against Oxford, Wilder’s old club, in the 3-1 win that kept us up on the final day. Toney made the difference. But it was skin of the teeth stuff.
What was clear from the moment you met Wilder, however, was that he’s a winner. That can sound like an empty statement but sometimes you play with or for someone for whom winning seems to matter that little bit more. They draw more out of those around them. Matching that desire was always his benchmark. “Win your headers, races and tackles” was, and still is, his most familiar trope. On a Saturday, Wilder was a bundle of fierce energy, ramping up the volume, baring his teeth, rousing and cajoling. He was never afraid to make the big decisions either.
During the week, he took a watching brief most of the time, during which Alan Knill, his assistant, took the lead in training. I’d worked with Knill at Rotherham United, where he was manager, and Chesterfield, where he was assistant-manager. It was always evident that he was a sharp coach. Training was varied, inquisitive. But the architect of a system of play that has taken League One, the Championship and now the Premier League by storm? Didn’t see that coming either.
At Northampton, granted, we worked on patterns of play that were pretty unusual in League Two. We secured League status by hook or by crook. Then we began work on trying to play some proper football. As a left back, when our centre half had the ball, I was told to hare forward down the line, while the midfield rotated and one of them dropped into the space I vacated to get on the ball. We worked constantly on switching play quickly. We often swapped from 4-3-3 to a 3-5-2, especially away from home. There was plenty of thought, but producing it on the pitch regularly was a different matter. The difference now, as Knill admitted to me recently and which I’m not too precious to reveal, is they have players who can bring their vision to life.
I sometimes wonder, however, what might have been had Northampton’s board shown a modicum less patience. Between October 5 and late December 2014 we lost ten out of 12 league games. Wilder became increasingly desperate. Two moments, in particular, reflected that. The first came after a 3-2 home defeat against Plymouth Argyle in mid December — a margin that doesn’t do the visitors justice (we scored two consolations in the last 11 minutes). At full time, Wilder let rip. We deserved it. He landed a punch on the tactics board, sending it crashing off its stand, blue and red magnets scattering across the changing room floor. It was the first time he acknowledged his job was on the line. The players’ Christmas party in Birmingham was planned that weekend. Instead, we were told to report to the stadium at 8am on Sunday morning. A bar crawl on Broad Street was replaced by laps of the pitch at Sixfields.
A couple of weeks later, after another two defeats, we played Tranmere Rovers at Prenton Park. We’d dropped to 19th in League Two. Personnel, formations, training routines — you name it, Wilder had tried to change it. In the hotel the night before the game, everyone was a told to meet at the bar at 8.30pm. We arrived to find a tray full of beers, bought by Wilder. There was no choice in the matter. Another round followed. Much like Brian Clough, who insisted on his Nottingham Forest team having a few drinks the night before the European Cup final, he was trying to lighten the mood, ease fraying nerves. But this was a humdrum League Two fixture. And it was five years ago, not the late Seventies. It didn’t work. We lost 2-1 and, to make matters worse, Micky Adams, the Tranmere manager, informed Wilder that his players had found out how we’d prepared the previous night. Two days later we each had to chip in a fiver to pay him back for the bar tab!
Now, there are always, upon reflection, events we would regard as turning points in life. Eighteen months later, after Northampton had won League Two at a canter, and Wilder had moved onto Sheffield United, a 2-1 defeat against Millwall — their third loss from the first four League One games — prompted Wilder to hand Billy Sharp, the captain, a wad of notes to buy some beers for the bus journey home. Thereafter, the shackles came off. The story, at the start of the Blades 2016-17 League One winning campaign, has gone down in folklore.
After the Tranmere game, though, Wilder told us, very calmly this time, that we could all leave when the transfer window opened in a few days’ time. Every one of us was transfer listed. We thought it was heat of the moment, put it down to the pressure. We wouldn’t have been surprised to have heard that he’d been sacked that weekend either. Instead, some of us soon started to field calls from other clubs. I was one of them. He wasn’t kidding. He convinced David Cardoza, the chairman, to back him in January, and laid the foundations then for the 99-point haul that followed in 2015-16.
Wilder, to be certain, would have been a success even if patience had not held at Northampton. He would still be recruiting players with a point to prove. He would still have Knill by his side. He would still be a winner. He would still draw more out of those around him.
Who knows how far that can take him?
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