"We certainly won't be in this position next year."
Those were the defiant, determined words of Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder after seeing his side lose their final two home games at the end of a difficult Championship season.
The defeats against Blackburn and Preston typified a lot of the Blades' issues over recent months with inconsistent halves of football, poor goals conceded and missed chances.
Wilder admits the club has underachieved this season, and should have taken more points, but the fact the season is ending with a sense of disappointment about what could have been, should be viewed as an achievement in itself.
When United fell agonisingly short in last season's play-off final, the minimum expectation this season was another top-six finish.
But the nightmare 88-day reign of Ruben Selles quickly shattered those expectations.
Key players were sold, replacements were both late and inadequate, despite considerable expense, with the remaining players from a top-three squad looking a shadow of themselves from just months before.
It meant United were pointless and bottom of the Championship in mid-September when Selles was sacked.
Even after the club's relatively new American owners COH Sports ate humble pie and brought Wilder back to Bramall Lane, the Blades remained at the foot of the table at the October international break on just three points, below bitter city-rivals Sheffield Wednesday who have now set multiple, unwanted records, including the earliest relegation in EFL history.
The signings of experienced free agents Patrick Bamford and Jairo Riedewald helped Wilder to change the narrative in a remarkable autumn period, given what had gone before.
On New Year's Day, after an impressive run of seven wins in 10 games, Sheffield United were 15th in the table, eight points from the play-off places, and crucially eight points clear of the drop zone.
A positive February then saw the Blades in 13th, just three wins off the top six with 11 games still to play.
There was a genuine hope that United could push on and make an improbable late run for the play-offs, but frustratingly that would be the high point of the season.
A six-game winless sequence into April pushed future planning rather than potential promotion to the forefront of minds, with Wilder, his staff and the club's supporters all conducting early inquests into a wasted season and to what will come next.
Wilder believes he now faces the biggest challenge of his already decade-long association with the Blades hotseat.
His legacy at the club was secured in his first spell at Bramall Lane when he took Sheffield United from the bottom end of League One to ninth in the Premier League, and nothing that happens from this point onwards should tarnish that remarkable period in Blades history.
Wilder was 15 minutes away from unequalled greatness as a Sheffield United manager in last season's agonising Championship play-off final defeat against Sunderland, which was his second rebuild at the club.
Now it's crunch time in Wilder's third spell in charge. A significant turnover in players is expected, which could include an exit for a star player or two, with finances tightening without parachute payments.
The team needs more character, more leadership and more quality, particularly in defence, but Wilder knows this more than anyone, and he's more than earned the right to go again.
