“Can I just offer a word of warning? If you think you’ve cracked it, if you all come off and you pat yourselves on the back and you think, we’ve got it now, and all of a sudden, everyone takes a couple of percent off their performance because they think that they’re there … I know this sounds like boring and pragmatic, but it’s the reality. And the reality is that, if I’m Sheffield United, I’m probably happy Oxford have won because they’re not that desperate.

… [at Sheffield United] There are obviously issues, … But he [Wilder] will be determined to put it right, and the players will be determined to put it right. So what you’ll get is a real engaged, tenacious [team]… you’re going to get that from Chris Wilder anyway, but you’re going to get almost a desperate team. And look, so that’s it.”

Ben Purkiss, The Dub, 22nd September 2025

Perhaps it’s his lawyerly training, but Ben Purkiss is a master at stating the obvious as insight. Maybe that’s a good thing, maybe we’re all too addicted to insight having to be genuinely novel. If the only insight that’s insightful is something you’ve never heard before, it encourages wild lying and speculation. You only have to look at LinkedIn to see the number of people making apocalyptic predictions about the impact of artificial intelligence, when the boring reality is that nobody knows what’s going to happen.

Nowadays, there’s a lot of talk about the ‘Overton window’, the idea that there’s a sociological space in which acceptable views can be shared. In today’s political discourse, the Overton window is stretched; you can seemingly express things that were previously viewed as radical in the name of free-speech. This isn’t necessarily a good thing, there’s a point where it’s genuinely harmful to social cohesion.

There’s a footballing equivalent; what is the window in which we can compete? Last week’s win stretched our window beyond what we thought was possible. But, counter to Purkiss’ warning, nobody was genuinely thinking that after the Bristol City game we’d cracked it. Yes, there’s a bit of euphoria around the result, that’s the drug we all feed off, but what you’re really looking for is the range; what’s the best we can be? What’s the worst we can be? Where’s the average? The hope is that the range isn’t too broad and that the average is increasing.

Beating Bristol City away from home, a team hoping to move into the automatic promotion positions, nudged the ‘what’s possible’ bar up a few notches – last season our best away win was against Millwall who finished eighth, Bristol City, then in third, was a significant advance.

But, nobody in their right mind thought we’d cracked it. If anything, the Sheffield United game offered the absolutely worst follow up. They’ve suffered a bizarre turnaround after being 14 minutes away from the Premier League back in May. From a team whose range sat somewhere between the top of the Championship and the bottom of the Premier League, they’ve looked like a team incapable of competing with anyone.

Except maths doesn’t work like that, even the worst teams don’t go on long extended runs of defeat. Five defeats in a row would typically be viewed as a crisis and they were staring down the barrel of a seventh straight loss. Even without intervention, the longer that streak went on, the more likely it would be to right itself. 

Plus, of course, there was intervention. On one level, Chris Wilder’s return to Sheffield United is bordering on the abusive. He’s done extraordinary things for The Blades, but there’ll be a point where he can no longer deliver the same highs as before. The longer the relationship goes on, the more likely it is to fail. Equally, Wilder loves the club and will continue to chase the highs both for himself and for them. And, even if he did turn them round, the highs will never feel as high as they were the first time around. It almost needs someone to put a hand on his shoulder and tell him to walk away before it consumes him.

You suspect he’ll never do that; Chris Wilder is a counter puncher, he needs something to rally against. When he arrived at Oxford, in his first game against Salisbury, Sam Deering broke his leg. Wilder declared Deering his best player, instantly creating something for him to fight against. When we were eight points clear at the top of the Conference, having beaten Eastbourne 4-0 and gone six games without conceding, Wilder turned on the players for being sloppy and rallied against fans who thought we deserved to be promoted because of our history. Last year he got angry at the suggestion that his success was helped by gargantuan Premier League parachute payments and, famously, he even turned on a match official for eating a sandwich.

But, equally, we’re a counter punching team, it’s well known that we can be streaky. Partly that’s to do with quality, but it’s also to do with other teams’ perception of us – if we’re on a bad run, they will under-estimate us and we can counterpunch them with a surprise, if we’re on a good run, they’re more likely to raise their game to counter our threat. 

So the challenge is, how do you counter-punch the counterpuncher? The first half yesterday looked like a continuation of the performance against Bristol City, we were sharp and quick to the ball, while they were spectacularly sluggish; on the turnover – they’d break away in ones and twos allowing us to easily mop up at the back. What we needed, but didn’t get, was a goal to kill their spirit.

In truth, Wilder didn’t need to do anything. He’d have been happy breaking their losing sequence with a point but equally he could gamble that our performance would begin to drop. After a good first half performance, it was unlikely we’d elevate further.

And, there would also be chances, because there always are, he just needed one to go in off someone’s backside – the proverbial that literally never happens. Except this time, it sort of did, Ogbene chased down a ball on the right which on another day may have just run out of play. He scooped it back to Callum O’Hare who fired it past Cumming. We’d been counter-punched.

Our response was muted, we regressed back to the side we were last season; almost literally: Prelek, Lankshear, Currie and Krastev were replaced by Harris, Mills, Vaulks and Leigh. We reverted back to trying to nick a goal from a long throw. Last season that was our high, this season, it’s closer to our low. Despite surviving a couple of late chances from Long and Leigh, the breakthrough didn’t come.

Purkiss was right, we haven’t cracked it. But, nobody has, we’re just trying to find our range – if Bristol City marked a new high, statistically at least, Sheffield United marks a low. But, equally, were we playing the worst team in the division, or a side revitalised by Chris Wilder who are about to climb the division? Where’s our middle? That’s yet to be established.