“It wasn’t good enough” – Wilder left frustrated after Bristol City defeat | OneFootball

Sheffield United head coach, Chris Wilder, spoke with the media following his side’s 1-0 defeat at Ashton Gate this afternoon. He opened by admitting that “the first half wasn’t good enough at all, the second half was, it’s a privilege to pull the shirt on and play for the football club, and those things were talked about at half-time, nobody’s trying to cruise through to the end of the season.”

Bristol City were arguably lucky to avoid Cameron Pring being sent off in the first half, Wilder gave his thoughts on this, saying “it’s absolutely incredible, I’ve managed for a long time now and played for quite a while, the referee and his cohorts have talked about Femi [Seriki] not being in a promising attacking position when he’s five or ten yards outside the box, if that’s not a promising position then what is? The second tackle is exactly the same as Tom Cannon’s, but yet again the courage to make that decision disappears in my opinion, and it’s disappeared far too many times.” He also admitted that Blades winger Andre Brooks should have been dismissed as well, later on in the game.

Wilder went on to speak about what this summer could look like for his club, “we’re potentially making a lot of changes, all the loan players will obviously go back to their clubs, six of them, we have some out of contract players that we have to make decisions on, we’ve got some players that potentially don’t carry us and take us forward. There’s going to be a lot of changes in the summer, and it might have been a few more after that first half performance, but the second half was much better. We put them on the back foot, and when we had to keep the ball out of the back of the net, we did.” Before adding, “I don’t like players that are milky and soft, and there was too much of that when they scored.”

He then spoke on the attitude of his squad, stating, “It was the attitude of the players in that second half that decided how it was going to go…what it has given us is a deep dive into what is needed.” Wilder believes that “there are benefits” to already being able to look towards the summer, but also of course, added that “I’d rather be in the top ten, looking to break into the top six, that was the ambition when we walked back in.”

Blades youngster Ryan Oné won promotion on loan at Lincoln City this afternoon, and Wilder spoke on what that could mean for his development. “It’s great for him. It was a difficult decision because there were lots of teams that were tracking him, but we knew he’d be in and around, and we knew he’d have chances to get on the pitch and chances to score. We wanted him to be in a team that creates. So to everybody at Lincoln City, congratulations and to Ryan himself too, it’s a special moment for him, hopefully he’ll come back and be a positive player, I’m sure he will.”