Opinion: If Sheffield United go up, this Blades player should look for the exit door ASAP | OneFootball

Their season is very much still up in the air after a general drop-off in their recent form, but Sheffield United are still in pole position to grab the second automatic promotion spot in the Championship.

More defeats have started to creep into their game in weeks gone by, but they have nine league matches to play, which is one more than their nearest challengers Middlesbrough, and they are three points ahead of the Teessiders.

Some tough fixtures are coming up for the Blades and they have the added distraction of an FA Cup semi-final against Man City to think about, so there's a chance that it could end up being the play-offs come May, but Paul Heckingbottom will not be wanting to go through that rigmarole again having fallen at the semi-final hurdle last year.

Should promotion be achieved however whether that is automatically or at Wembley, the United squad will need to be improved with the finances that you get from simply being a Premier League club, and their attack may need to be remodelled.

Iliman Ndiaye would surely extend his stay at Bramall Lane if they go up and Oli McBurnie deserves another shot at the top flight thanks to his form this season, but in terms of the likes of Rhian Brewster, Billy Sharp and Daniel Jebbison, their futures would be more uncertain.

Brewster has not shown the level of form needed to be starting in the Premier League and Sharp is very much coming to the end of his career at the age of 37 - then there is Jebbison.

A player who has been linked with plenty of Premier League and Bundesliga clubs in his brief professional career so far, Jebbison has been in England since he was a teenager having moved from Canada and he quickly rose through the ranks of the Blades academy and made his professional debut as 17-year-old - in the Premier League no less when they had already been relegated.

And he made himself very much known when in his very first Premier League start, which came against Everton at Goodison Park in May 2021, he scored the only goal of the game to put himself on the map.

Not many players of that age though will cement themselves in a Championship side, which is what United became later that year, and the decision was made to loan Jebbison out to League One side Burton Albion at the start of the 2021-22 campaign to aid his development.

He returned to Bramall Lane for the second half of the campaign and played a small part with nine goalless league appearances, and the current campaign has been somewhat of a similar story for the teenager.

Jebbison has played 14 times in all competitions with two goals scored - one of those a winner in the league against Hull City - but he has struggled to force his way ahead of the likes of Sharp and McBurnie in the pecking order, firstly due to McBurnie's goalscoring exploits and because he doesn't often get enough time on the pitch to make an impact.

That needs to change next season however - should United stay in the Championship then the expected departure of Ndiaye to a top flight club would perhaps pave the way for him to become a regular starter, but promotion for his club should perhaps present a different opportunity.

Should that happen, then United need to facilitate a loan move to a second tier club for Jebbison next season, where he would start week in, week out because he now needs to do it at Championship level when he turns 20 in the summer.

He is still in the infancy of his career, but Jebbison has been in and around a promotion-chasing side for nearly 18 months now - should the Premier League return occur then he needs to forget about the top flight for a year and go out to prove himself, perhaps to a lower-end club in the Championship where he is more guaranteed to be involved on a weekly basis.