Chris Wilder
Sheffield United’s first pre-season friendly at Dundee United was abandoned at half-time due to torrential rain. The Blades were leading 1-0 courtesy of Billy Sharp’s 43rd-minute strike. And although not ideal that the first game lasted only 45 minutes, Chris Wilder said abandoning the match was the right thing to do.
Chris Wilder said “It’s a bit different to Portugal (last season’s tour), I think it’s going to be like that all pre-season, it’s going to be reactive rather than the other way with whatever we do. The start is not a great one but I have just said to the players their attitude towards it, they have a young team out, we understand that but their attitude towards it was really good. They have had 45 minutes in their legs, we have not done as much as we would have liked but we will top them up in another way, it is what it is and we have to move on. I have known Micky Mellon for a really long time, they are really good guys here. It was good for their young boys as well to play against our team. You look to try and get the maximum out of it, we would have loved 60 minutes out of it with that team, that’s how we were looking at it, 60 minutes for those and then 30 minutes for the other boys, but we will react to it. You just don’t want to get into that position where we regret it and think why didn’t we? After 25 minutes the fourth official was looking at me, I said give it until half-time and we will see what’s what. It’s not going to change and you don’t want to pick up a naughty injury, that’s key. We had a good run of having a good bill of health for quite a while now and we don’t want to risk that for the sake of getting another 10 minutes out of the players.”
