‘It felt like Sheffield United had brought a knife to a gunfight...’- How the Blades suffered Premier League relegation

Foderingham; Ahmedhodzic, Egan, Robinson; Baldock, Basham, Norwood, Lowe; Traore, Osborn; Osula. Substitutes: Slimane, Souza, Larouci, Hackford, Brooks, Davies, Trusty, Marsh, Seriki.

Sheffield United were set up to fail from the start. No one can be surprised at their relegation from the Premier League.

The season’s first team-sheet was a sobering reminder of how mismanaged the Blades were last summer. That is not a reference to the man in the dugout, Paul Heckingbottom, but the hand he was dealt.

That team would lose to the side of the previous campaign. They finished second in the Championship, limping a little over the line when Middlesbrough turned up the heat. This was the Premier League.

Chris Basham is the sort of character every club needs, but the team itself was moving on from him, with only 18 Championship starts the previous campaign. But he needed to do a job in midfield alongside Oliver Norwood, a fellow star of 2019-20 who lost his place to Tommy Doyle in the 2023 run-in.

Benie Traore was a 20-year-old whose senior career ran to 26 starts in Sweden's top-flight. His fellow inside-forward was Ben Osborn, an odd-job man, not a specialist there. Will Osula was seventh-choice centre-forward in the Championship.

"It felt like Sheffield United had brought a knife to a gunfight, only to stop on the way to pawn it," I wrote on that first day. "Heckingbottom's pre-match phrase about ‘rabbits in the headlights’ sprang to mind".

Gustavo Hamer was there in his civvies, signed the night before, and excelled in last season's Championship but had come at a cost – Sander Berge, flogged to Burnley. Iliman Ndiaye had been sold to Marseille and would be replaced with Cameron Archer. Neither were upgrades.

Tom Davies joined within days but without a proper pre-season he has only made two starts.

James McAtee returned later in the window for another loan from Manchester City but not Doyle. Luke Thomas came too, but was sent back at the first opportunity.

There was more to such a dreadful season – still to be completed but no longer meaningful after relegation was confirmed at the weekend – than one poor transfer window.

Bad luck played its part, captain John Egan and vice-captain Basham – both centre-backs – suffering season-ending injuries autumn days apart. Fate is very easily tempted when you provoke it like that.

After such an unambitious summer, there was never going to be the sort of January outlay to drag it back – not with Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad Al Saud still incapable of selling the club – and anyway Ivo Grbic and Mason Holgate were bad signings, Ben Brereton Diaz only able to do so much.

Chris Wilder could not turn a tsunami of a tide.

Players not caring or trying hard enough is often chucked at footballers in losing teams but Sheffield United's were neither good nor mentally strong enough collectively to stand the Premier League heat.

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Just £20m to upgrade the squad to Premier League standard was a white flag. Selling Berge and Ndiaye to add to it ran it up the flagpole.

It would not have been so bad had there been more investment since the disastrous summer of 2020. Heckingbottom papered over the cracks in the second tier but the spotlight is much brighter in the world's most-watched league.

As then-Barnsley manager Neill Collins remarked, Heckingbottom would still be in charge had the Blades lost in last season's play-offs. He did well to last to December.

The board knew they had handed him a hospital pass but the beatings became too inhumane to turn a blind eye to.

Vinicius Souza, the most expensive of the first wave of recruits, thinks he should be a Brazilian international but we have seen him play. Like Hamer and Archer, he has only produced in flashes when needed to carry the team.

So exciting in the second tier, Anel Ahmedhodzic has failed to step up. Losing Egan cannot have helped but Jack Robinson – the least gifted of the Blades' back three last season – has been their best player.

With so little of Egan, Basham, Norwood (by choice), Davies and Oli McBurnie (not robust enough for a 38-game Premier League season), a lack of leadership was laid bare by hammerings which mean they will surely end the season conceding more than 100 goals.

Even with only 10 starts, 20-year-old midfielder Oliver Arblaster is probably second behind Robinson in the player-of-the-season running. Brave in where he takes the ball, careful in how he uses it and hungry to win it back, he is the great hope for the future but there is so much work to be done around him, an instant promotion looks difficult.

There are many lessons to learn from 2023-24, just the completion of nearly four years of bad decisions. Top of the list is not to rebuild the house with straw and expect to survive amongst the big, bad wolves of the Premier League.