Sheffield United should have predicted what was to come for £1.15m striker in 2010: View | OneFootball

The signs of the career he'd go on to have were there from the beginning

Club legend Billy Sharp was never too far away from another spell at Sheffield United throughout his career, but a little more faith at the beginning of his career could have seen him complete many more seasons at Bramall Lane.

The veteran striker began his career at the Blades, his boyhood club, but didn’t have a straight path to the first team.

It wasn’t plain sailing once he got there either, being discarded after a couple of seasons in the Championship with United, with his numbers not quite where they’d end up getting to.

But the Blades should have seen what was to come in the two campaigns he spent with Scunthorpe United after breaking out of youth football.

Billy Sharp showed his prolific streak at Scunthorpe United

The forward dropped down a division early in his career to find starting minutes and it proved a fruitful venture.

In back-to-back seasons, he recorded 23 goals and then 30 goals in League One, in 37 and 45 appearances respectively.

It was enough to provoke his former club, the Blades, to come back in for him in 2007.

Having been sold to Scunthorpe for just £100,000 a couple of years previous, the £2million price tag the Yorkshire club slapped on him in 2007 was a sign of how important Sheffield felt he could be for them.

Billy Sharp didn’t hit the ground running in his Bramall Lane return

Having reached the heights he did at the Iron, the next two seasons with the Blades felt like a bit of a step backwards.

He scored just four league goals each in consecutive seasons at Bramall Lane. It’s easy to see how the decision-makers at United came to the conclusion that he was struggling with the jump up to the Championship.

But it is rare that a player can hit goals as easily as he did for Scunthorpe, and then suddenly forget where the goal is.

News outlets were already marking him as one to watch before his Sheffield return. The club had watched him throughout his youth career and had seen what he was capable of at the professional level with the Iron. It’s no stretch to feel that they could have allowed a young striker a little more time to acclimatise to the level.

And the Blades would go on to wish that they had done precisely that.

There have been few forwards more effective than Billy Sharp

Instead of sticking with Sharp, they shipped him back out in 2009, first on loan to Doncaster Rovers before making that deal permanent in 2010, for a fee of £1.15million, registering a loss on their initial outlay.

It wouldn’t be the last the Blades would see of Sharp, as he returned for his main spell at Bramall Lane in 2015, one which would last until the summer of 2023.

By his third stint, there was no questioning the striker’s goalscoring ability, his goals playing a key role in dragging the club out of League One and all the way to the Premier League.

Considering that Sharp now sits as the all-time Championship top scorer, it’s remarkable that United ever let him go, considering what he had shown for Scunthorpe earlier in his career.

Sharp will still undoubtedly go down as a club legend, of that there is no question, but being Sheffield born and bred and a Blades fan, it feels like the Yorkshire club could have seen even more of him had they shown a little more faith in him in those earlier seasons.

It’s a decision supporters may regret when looking back with hindsight.