Sheffield United made a £100k Billy Sharp call they quickly regretted | OneFootball

Over three spells and almost 400 appearances, Billy Sharp became a Sheffield United legend, but they let him go at 19 for a relative pittance.

Billy Sharp became a Sheffield United club legend over three separate spells with the club, but at the very start of his career, the Blades let the striker for a small amount of money.

On the final weekend of the 2025-26 season, Billy Sharp signed off from Doncaster Rovers in arguably the only way he knew how. Without a contract for the new season, and by this time 40 years old, he sealed his final appearance with a second half hat-trick in a 3-1 win away to Peterborough United which saw them finish in 14th place in the table.

This was Sharp's third spell at Doncaster, but he's perhaps better remembered for the three spells that he also had with Sheffield United. Sharp made 377 appearances for the Blades in total, scoring 129 goals and creating 42 assists, and played for them in the Premier League, the Championship and League One.

But while Sharp's legendary status at Bramall Lane has long since been confirmed, there was a time when the club didn't necessarily feel that he'd make the grade. Indeed, having come up through the ranks at Sheffield United, manager Neil Warnock made something of a miscalculation in letting him go at just 19 years of age, and for a very small transfer fee indeed.

Billy Sharp originally slipped through Sheffield United's fingers at a very tender age

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Billy Sharp might be most closely connected with Sheffield United and Doncaster Rovers, but it was at another South Yorkshire club that he started his journey towards the professional game.

Despite having been born in the Steel City, Rotherham United were the first club to take him on as a youth player before Sheffield United took him on into their youth team, putting him into their first team squad for the 2004-05 season.

He made his debut for them from the bench against Watford in November 2004, but the following January he was sent on loan to Rushden & Diamonds, where he scored nine goals in 16 games, returning before the end of the season to make a second substitute appearance for the Blades in their final match of the season against Wolverhampton Wanderers.

But that summer, there was a surprise in store for Sharp when he was deemed surplus to requirements at Bramall Lane, and was sold to League One Scunthorpe United for the very low fee of £100,000 at the start of the 2005-06 season.

Billy Sharp's sale to Scunthorpe was a decision that the Blades would quickly come to regret

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Dropping a division to play for Scunthorpe United proved to be the move that Sharp needed in order to kick-start his career. He scored 23 goals in 37 League One appearances for them throughout the 2005-06 League One season as the Iron finished in 12th place in the table, but really caught light for them the following season, scoring 30 goals in 45 League appearances as Scunthorpe raced to the League One title.

The first team to be connected with him were Sheffield Wednesday, who had a £1.5 million for him rejected. There also followed interest from Preston North End and Norwich City, but the Scunthorpe chairman was very clear about his expectations in terms of a fee: "Clubs looking at Billy know that our asking price is £2m, plus various other things built into the package to make it substantially more."

And in the end, it was his former club who came calling again in the summer of 2007. Sheffield United matched Scunthorpe's valuation of Sharp, with young striker Jonathan Forte going in the opposite direction. The amount of money paid remained undisclosed, but it's believed that the package was worth £2 million, meaning that the Blades had bought Sharp back for around twenty times the amount they'd sold him for just two years earlier.

Sharp's second spell at Bramall Lane wasn't a success either, but his third was

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After a further two seasons at Bramall Lane, Sharp was on his way again, this time on a season-long loan to Doncaster Rovers. Over the course of his second spell with Sheffield United, he'd managed just eight goals in 51 League appearances for the Blade. And when it came to the end of that loan period, and after some protracted negotiations, they made the transfer permanent for £1.15 million.

It wouldn't be until 2015 that Sharp would return to Sheffield United, and this time it was via a circuitous route. Doncaster sold him to Southampton in January 2012, and he would have loan spells at Nottingham Forest, Reading and back at Doncaster Rovers before going to Leeds United in 2014 and then returning to Bramall Lane a year later.

This time, it did stick. Sharp stayed with the club for eight years this time, winning promotion from League One in 2017 and from the Championship in both 2019 and 2023 before leaving as a free agent for LA Galaxy that summer. There'd be a further short-term deal with a move to Hull City for the second half of the 2023-24 season before he made a second return to Doncaster Rovers, ten years after he last left the club, in the summer of 2024.

By this time, Sharp was 38-years-old, but there was still one more triumph when Doncaster won the 2024-25 League Two title. He left the club when his contract expired in the summer of 2026, with that last day hat-trick as a final goodbye to the club.

Over the course of a senior career that's lasted 22 years, Billy Sharp has achieved something remarkable in showing such loyalty to two different clubs. In total, he's made over 800 senior career appearances, of which 377 came for Sheffield United and 198 came for Doncaster Rovers.

There does remain a possibility that he could yet play somewhere this season. Although without a club at present, he said in April: "I can play on another year, but I'm not quite sure what I'm going to do." As a free agent, the closure of the transfer window doesn't apply to him, so there's no particular rush on his part to find a club. And given his record over a career that's lasted for more than two decades, you wouldn't bet against him making one final return.

20 years ago, Sheffield United made the mistake of feeling that Billy Sharp wasn't the right fit for their club. It was a decision that they quickly came to regret, and his return proved to be an expensive one for them. It seems unlikely that he'll be returning to Bramall Lane as a player, but you wouldn't completely rules out a coaching career that could take in Sheffield United, Doncaster Rovers