Wilder reveals that Sheffield United defender could miss Fleetwood clash | OneFootball

Chris Wilder revealed that Sam McCallum could miss Sheffield United’s EFL Cup clash against Fleetwood with injury.

The left-back was forced off late in the game against Wolves last weekend after taking an ‘unbelievable whack’ in the defeat.

“He got an unbelievable whack,” Wilder said. “He had a lengthy treatment at half-time and he’s a major doubt for Wednesday. The schedule is ridiculous. I think a couple of managers have pointed it out.“We want to progress. We all want to progress in the cup. I suppose that’s the price we have to pay. If we manage to get through a really difficult tie on Wednesday night, we’ll have the same situation.

“But the amount of games we’re playing straight off just opens it up. No wonder clubs are picking up injuries. We’re not the only ones. A lot of clubs are picking up injuries and putting the players at risk of that.

“All the supporters pay good money to watch a team trying to get into a flow, trying to show some consistency. At the moment, we’re chopping and changing. And we’ll most probably have to do that on Wednesday night.”

Wilder also gave fitness updates on the rest of the squad ahead of the match.

“Just for clarity, we always had down Kalvin [Phillips] to do 60 minutes,” he added. “We would have made a change with Rom coming on with 15 minutes to go, but having to take Sam off altered those plans as well. So we wanted to get Rom on the pitch.

“He’s played a lot of football recently for a young boy as well. And Blaster as well, who I thought was outstanding on Sunday afternoon, coming off the pitch. So there’s still a couple of physical substitutions that we have to make at this stage of the season. Ben Brereton-Diaz has played too much football, in my opinion. 

“That would have been supplemented with Ryan, if he was fit, and Rom. Same situation. That would have been the situation with Chong as well. So, yeah, players getting through, players getting through and putting everything on the line like they did Sunday, which makes me feel positive in terms of what we can achieve going forward. But, yeah, they’re the sort of physical and injury situations.”