Slavisa Jokanovic sides tend to start the season rather slowly but, even by his standards, Sheffield United have stumbled out of the blocks at a snail’s pace.
Three months into the Championship campaign, the early-season promotion favourites are stuck in 17th place, a run of four games without a win meaning the Blades are now closer to the relegation zone than they are to the Promised Land of the play-off places.
Perhaps the most baffling aspect of Jokanovic’s tenure so far surrounds the lack of goals. Just 22 to be precise.
Especially when you consider that Sheffield United’s strikeforce looks, on paper at least, like the Championship’s answer to the Galacticos.
Arguably only Fulham (21 of their 48 goals coming from the irrepressible Aleksandr Mitrovic) have a more fearsome frontline.
Oli McBurnie scored 22 times for Swansea City in 2018/19. David McGoldrick hit 15 that very same season.
No player in the whole of the Football League has scored more EFL goals than Billy Sharp. Lys Mousset, meanwhile, was one of the key cogs in a Sheffield United side who were dreaming of European qualification just over a year ago.
Will Sheffield United sell Rhian Brewster to Nottingham Forest?
And then there’s Rhian Brewster, the club’s £23.5 million record signing, a former Liverpool wonderkid who took the Championship by storm during a loan spell at Swansea City not so long ago.
Brewster netted ten times in just 20 games under Steve Cooper, his former England U17 boss, at the Liberty Stadium.
According to TEAMtalk, a reunion at Nottingham Forest may be on the cards with the two-time European champions planning a loan-to-buy January bid for a player who appears to have been made available for transfer by his current employers.
But the feeling, among many Sheffield United supporters, is that this is a ‘big mistake’ in the making.
After all, how can Brewster be expected to live up to his hefty price-tag if spends most of his Saturday afternoons wasting away on the bench?
A case in point; Brewster finally scored his first Sheffield United league goal against Blackburn before the international break. Two weeks later, he was back on the sidelines once again.
No wonder his confidence, not to mention his goals’ return, has plummeted at Bramall Lane.
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