Sheffield United's Chris Wilder on Dave Bassett, the managerial trailblazer lazily overlooked by history

On Monday, Wilder's Sheffield United host Arsenal, the club Wenger transformed in the 1990s.

Ever since Sheffielder Herbert Chapman set them on the path to glory in the 1930s, the Gunners have been seen as aristocrats of English football, and a natural choice for an Amazon Prime documentary, All or Nothing, in 2022.

But the fact the Blades side Wilder played for beat them to it by nearly 30 years with fly-on-the-wall United, was another sign to him that Bassett was as forward-thinking as anyone.

"Looking back at it, it was quite interesting some of the situations that were filmed and highlighted as well," said the former defender, now manager.

"It capped an incredible season with a brilliant finish. One of the trailblazers and that's what Harry was, he was a trailblazer in terms of sports science, from a psychology point of view and video analysis.

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"Even stuff like that, for him to agree to that would have maybe surprised quite a few of us at the time but it's something that is there and recorded. We were one of the early ones to go deep into that type of insight into a professional footballer and a professional football team, on and off the pitch."

Wilder, who pioneered a way of playing with overlapping centre-backs in his first spell at Bramall Lane, is not as readily seen as one of the game's great thinkers as his counterpart on Monday, Mikel Arteta, once a cultured Spanish midfielder.

"I think football's lazy at times," said Wilder. "Very lazy in terms of its opinion and it doesn't do its homework.

"People do get typecast and there's so many of them, going back.

"Looking to the game on Monday, Arsene Wenger was quite rightly celebrated in terms of changing a lot of the things in English football and the Premier League at the time but there was still a lot of good work going on and a lot of progression in the game, by English coaches and managers pre-Arsene.

"The likes of Dave Bassett and the other guys, Graham Taylor and Howard Wilkinson, doing a lot of good and revolutionary things. If people delve into those guys and their careers, I think they'd be quite surprised how at the forefront they were of modern football really."