Inside the Sheffield United chaos: A data-loving poker player with no official role but more and more power, why Ruben Selles was hired without an interview, transfer failures and how Chris Wilder can stop the rot

Sheffield United are Reunited. They’ve kissed and made up. Chris Wilder is back. The red-and-white side of South Yorkshire’s steel city revolves once more on its correct axis.

For many Blades supporters it is the most positive move the American owners have made in the nine months since they bought the club. A decision to hint they recognise a mistake when they make one - and might not know quite as much as they thought they did.

For some, this is encouraging, although the jury remains very much out on the COH Sports consortium, the third different set of owners to appoint Wilder at Bramall Lane in the last nine years. And the reason he's back, of course, is that Ruben Selles' appointment was such a disaster that the Spaniard had to be relieved of his duties before the six-game losing streak to start his reign could stretch any further.

The Blades are rock bottom of the Championship with one goal and five defeats from five, including hammerings by Ipswich and Bristol City. A first-round Carabao Cup exit at Birmingham City added further pain. 

Little has been heard directly from the owners since they paid £100million to buy the club from Prince Abdullah bin Mosaad Al Saud in December. They are fronted by co-chairmen Steven Rosen, a venture capitalist, and Helmy Eltoukhy, a biotech entrepreneur. Board members include Hollywood filmmaker Joe Russo, co-director of four Marvel films with his brother Anthony.

However, the co-investor at the centre of most intrigue during these months around Wilder’s sacking in June and the hiring of Selles holds no official position.

James Bord is a London-born former banker and professional poker player. He worked for Tony Bloom in the Brighton owner's hush-hush analytics company Starlizard before launching his own sports data company, Shortcircuit Science.

Now based in Las Vegas, he has ventured into football aiming to replicate Bloom’s success on the south coast, by recruiting talent from obscure and undervalued markets and developing them.

Bord co-owns Dunfermline Athletic in the Scottish Championship - he sacked their boss Michael Tidser after only 11 games in March - and holds minority stakes in Bulgarian top-flight club Septemvri Sofia and Cordoba in Spain’s second division.

His analytics are part of the recruitment strategy at Sheffield United, and data has been presented to Wilder and Selles to support team selection, although they have never been told who to pick.

It is understood friction around these matters put a strain on Wilder’s relationship with the owners before his sacking in June, but it has not stopped him coming back. When asked about recruitment at a press conference on Tuesday, Wilder called it a ‘collaboration’ and insisted it is ‘not 100 per cent’ driven by the data.

Among the young players identified for recruitment are three from Bulgarian football. Mihail Polendakov, 18, from Septemvri Sofia and Nigerian pair Ehije Ukaki and Christian Nwachukwu, both from Botev Plovdiv. They are clearly earmarked for the future. Only midfielder Ukaki has played, 82 minutes in the defeat at Birmingham.

Jefferson Caceres is a 23-year-old winger signed from Melgar in his native Peru in February and loaned to Dunfermline without making an appearance, to clear one of the club’s visa slots.

Selles, too, is thought to have been identified because his data was strong. His Hull City team also caught the attention of the new Blades owners with a 3-0 win at Bramall Lane in January, a classic away performance.

There was no exhaustive shortlisting or interview process. The job seemed to be his if he wanted it, and he did.

In June, Selles was out of work, sacked by Hull despite keeping them up and pitching for jobs in League One. He was on the shortlist for the Huddersfield Town job when Sheffield United, a club with clear Premier League ambitions, made the surprise approach.

After stepping up from the backroom staff to take charge of Southampton when they were already doomed to relegation in 2023, and 18 months at the helm of Reading where he impressed during the worst of their financial crisis, he jumped at the opportunity.

For the Blades, replacing a popular course-and-distance manager with a 42-year-old with limited Championship experience and no promotion to his name was high risk. It did not pay off.

Selles set out to deliver an attractive brand of open, attacking football. There was encouragement in pre-season. They lost narrowly to Nice in France and beat Fulham 3-2 in a 120-minute training game, both behind closed doors.

Callum O’Hare’s winner at Fulham was the epitome of what Selles wanted to deliver, with intense pressing to win back the ball in high areas and threaten the goal.

Then the season started against Bristol City at Bramall Lane and the Blades conceded four to a team they had thrashed 6-0 on aggregate in the play-offs in May.

Selles embarrassed his players by delivering an angry team talk on the pitch afterwards. It seemed ill-judged at the time and even more so now, as players lost confidence and abandoned faith in his methods.

He was not disliked by players - they thought he was nice enough but not very assertive. Sources claim he did not adapt tactically to accommodate key players. And the first murmurings about the outrageous possibility of Wilder’s return surfaced after a 5-0 gubbing at Ipswich last Friday.

Selles dropped Gus Hamer, the Championship’s reigning Player of the Year, and last season's top scorer Tyrese Campbell, and although they were not outplayed from start to finish, they attacked freely without caution, failed to score and were brutally exposed at the back.

Michael Cooper, arguably the best goalkeeper in the EFL, has looked shaken by the ordeal. Fans turned. Selles insisted afterwards that he had the backing of the owners. He was fired on Sunday.

Wilder said the call from Stephen Bettis, Sheffield United’s chief executive, had come on Friday. By Monday, he was back at the training ground, taking training, settling back behind his desk, signing a contract until 2027.

On Tuesday, at his press conference, he spoke positively about the owners who had reinstated him just 89 days after sacking him.

He insisted he was not ‘smug’ or ‘looking for apologies’ and was upbeat about the owners being engaged and interested, and easier to get through to than the previous regime.

In truth, it is difficult to look less interested than Prince Abdullah, one man with advisers ‘wrapped around him’ as Wilder put it. Although the Americans might want to be careful, because some supporters are detecting similar vibes.

Sheffield United spent three of the six seasons before this one in the Premier League and, with the fortune that brings, they really should be better set than they are. 

Facilities have hardly improved since promotion under Wilder in 2019. Planning was already in place to expand and upgrade Bramall Lane, but little has altered.

In 2024, they acquired a site for a new training centre in Dore, to the south of the city, with Bettis claiming it was the gateway to the next level and a Category One academy, but there is no discernible progress.

Wilder, though, is not back for a power grab. He is not demanding total control. He appreciates football has changed and Sheffield United are a larger operation than when he first took the job nine years ago with the club down in League One.

Data and AI are vital tools for any modern club. He understands that. He will work with it and has worked with it in the past. Just as he will dovetail with a director of football if necessary.

It would make sense to fill this void in the executive structure and leave Wilder to focus on creating a culture for more success from the ‘broken’ and ‘beat up’ squad he inherits.

At 57, he looks slim and energised. Itching to show he can motivate the squad revealed to be ranking bottom of the Championship’s 24 sides for duels won and in the bottom four for running stats.

There is plenty to keep him occupied because for all his positivity, the bedrock of the team that collected 92 points and finished third last season is no longer there.

Centre halves Anel Ahmedhodzic and Jack Robinson and midfield screener Vini Souza were all sold. None of the seven players he had on loan came back. There are 14 summer recruits. And they have the worst record of any team in the top four divisions.

Wilder probably relishes the challenge more than if they were midtable. The rockface is there to scale. 

And if some fans had been wondering last season if it might be time to move on from the Wilder era and add a little European influence to take them back into the Premier League, then the last three months under Spaniard Selles has prompted most to reconsider.

'If 70 per cent were disappointed when Wilder left, 95 per cent are delighted he’s back,' was how one source weighed the mood.

It promises to be a special occasion at home against Charlton on Saturday, a day when the safe standing section will open, marking the first time fans have stood on Bramall Lane’s Kop since the last game of 1990-91 season, a 2-1 win against Norwich when Tony Agana scored two and Wilder was in the team.