'Owners support me' - Selles bullish despite Blades' start

Sheffield United were thrashed 5-0 by Ipswich Town at Portman Road on Friday

Sheffield United head coach Ruben Selles says he has the support of the club's board despite overseeing their worst start to a season for 30 years.

The Blades have lost all six games under the former Hull City boss and sit bottom of the Championship.

Their miserable start to the season reached a new low on Friday as they were thrashed 5-0 by Ipswich Town at Portman Road, with Jaden Philogene scoring a hat-trick as the Tractor Boys recorded their first win of the season.

Selles, 42, was bullish after the match and insisted there were positives to take from the performance.

"If you don't win football matches your position is going to be discussed, not only for me but for every coach in the world. We have to keep working hard until the end," he told Sky Sports.

"The owners have been supporting me until today. I haven't spoken to them after the game. I'm not worried about that, I'm just worried about how we can do things better. I'm the first one to give pressure to myself.

"I believe in myself. I will always be in front of anything that has my name.

"We are not going to solve anything tonight but we have to analyse. The good thing about football is you have another game in seven days and it's another opportunity."

Wilder return 'more than a rumour'

Talk that Selles' predecessor Chris Wilder could make a swift return to the Bramall Lane dugout is rife in the Steel City - and BBC Radio Sheffield's Rob Staton says there is substance behind it.

Boyhood Blades fan Wilder was sacked in June despite leading them to the Championship play-off final last season, with Selles brought in as his surprise replacement.

"It's more than a rumour," Staton told BBC Radio 5 Live on Saturday. "Chris Wilder loves Sheffield United and I think he would be interested in coming back.

"Let's not forget, he got 92 points last season and should have won that play-off final against Sunderland. They were the better team for 70 minutes and blew it at the end.

"This has been a mistake by the owners that they can rectify, and perhaps they will go down that road and it can happen quite quickly. We will see.

"The problem is that at Sheffield United you don't have one person making the decisions.

"You have a number of different people who all have their say and I suspect that what happened in the summer was you had some people wanting to go in one direction, some people who wanted to carry on in the direction they were going, and everybody was having their say."

However, the nightmare nature of Selles' start could persuade the Blades boardroom to make a quick U-turn on that decision, Staton believes.

"The expectation is there's going to be a change, after six straight defeats at the start of the season with a club that is expected to be up there," he added.

"If you are sounding out your former manager, you would imagine the writing is on the wall and maybe this is now about going through the process of making that change.

"Perhaps those voices who had the strongest say in the summer are not quite as loud now because the plan they have gone with, of Selles and a transfer policy using AI, has not worked.

"So they're going back to the plan that did work. Chris Wilder is Sheffield United's greatest-ever manager alongside Dave Bassett and the players that are playing so poorly for them at the moment played very, very well under Wilder last year.

"If they rectify this and move quickly they can still salvage this season."

Numbers behind Blades' nightmare start

The stats do not make good reading for Selles.

The Blades have conceded 12 goals in their five Championship games, the most in the division.

It took until Boxing Day for his predecessor Chris Wilder's side to concede that number last season.

Tyrese Campbell's strike in a 4-1 home defeat by Bristol City on the opening day of the season is the only time Selles' side have found the net in the league this season.

But how does their start compare to others in the past?

Since the Championship was rebranded for 2004-05, only four teams have previously lost five matches in a row to start a season: city rivals Sheffield Wednesday (2007-08), Peterborough United (2012-13), Blackpool (2014-15) and Wycombe Wanderers (2020-21).

Only one team ended up surviving - Wednesday, who finished 16th, three points above the relegation zone.

It is the Blades' worst start to a season since 1995-96. That season manager Dave Bassett was replaced by Howard Kendall in December and the club recovered to finish ninth in the second tier.