Having drawn 2-2 at home to Southend united last Saturday, avoiding a second successive league home defeat, the Blades lay eighth in League One table and whilst they are nine points behind joint league leaders Gillingham and Coventry City, they have kept themselves within in glimpse of promotion.
This may seem difficult to realise considering the inconsistency which United form guide tells us, in the last 6 league games they have won two, drawn two and lost two. But Blades boss Nigel Adkins believes that United can still maintain a shot at automatic promotion as long as they keep up in and around the top six with the transfer window set to open on 1 January.
Speaking prior to last Saturday's fixture, Adkins told the Sheffield Telegraph; “For me, it’s about making sure we go all the way to January still in the race. And then, you have a situation where you can move things around and then at the end of January, you make sure you are still in that race to go for top spot.” He added: “Ideally, you want consistency of team selection and in that right alone, we need to reduce the amount of players we’ve got. Yes, you have got to deal with injuries and suspensions, but purely on an economic and business basis, you are going to have to pay a lot of players and we have got too many. That needs to be addressed. Maybe a couple might go out on loan and other things might materialise. You also have to manage the business side of things. You can’t do it all in one go, you have sometimes to do it in little periods.”
Rumours on the terraces are that the Blades will look to offload nine players and bring in six of his own in order to bolster any promotion attack. Whom these nine players are will remain to be seen, but we can only assume that amongst the axe grinding will be Michael Higdon, Marc McNulty and Craig Alcock who have already left the club in loan deals. He may also look at players who are out of contract at the end of the season, Callum McFadzean and Ryan Flynn to name two, Belgian national Florent Cuvelier, signed by David Weir, he has spent the majority of his Blades stay on the injury list.
Coming in will also be interesting, Adkins has constantly chased the services of Fulham defender Dan Burn and he may also make the transfer of Dean Hammond from Leicester City a permanent feature.