Jake Wright departing Sheffield United for Bolton makes perfect sense

According to the Sheffield Star, Sheffield United centre-back, Jake Wright, has departed Bramall Lane on a season-long loan deal to League One outfit Bolton Wanderers. 

The 33-year-old defender was transfer-listed by the Blades earlier in the summer upon their promotion to the Premier League but it wasn’t until the transfer deadline day that the veteran completed a move away from South Yorkshire. (h/t Sheffield Star)

A youth product of Bradford City, Wright played only a solitary game for his boyhood club before dropping down to non-league football with Halifax Town and Crawley Town.

He returned to the Football League system with Brighton in 2009 but it was at Oxford United that he settled down and carved out a reputation for himself. 

Wright made over 200 appearances for Oxford United in the fourth-tier of English football before earning a move to Sheffield United in 2016. 

The centre-back was one of the mainstays of the side managed by Chris Wilder that won promotion to the Championship in 2017 and he even featured on 17 occasions for the Blades in the second-tier in the 2017-18 season before being frozen out of the first-team fold by the manager.

The 33-year-old failed to make a single appearance for the club over the entirety of the 2018-19 campaign, with Wilder happy to show confidence in the likes of Chris Basham, John Egan and Jack O’Connor as the three centre-backs in his back-three system.

And the writing was pretty much on the wall for Wright when Sheffield United secured automatic promotion back to the Premier League at the end of the previous campaign.

After playing in the third and fourth divisions of English football for the majority of his career, the Blades were hardly ever going to play a gamble on him in the top-flight, especially at the age of 33. 

To put things into perspective, United’s decision to loan out Jake Wright looks completely justified, given that his chances of playing in the Premier League this term looked very bleak.

Given his lack of exposure at the highest level, Wright was not expected to be a part of Wilder’s plans moving forward and a loan move to Bolton looks like a fair settlement for all parties involved. 

Besides the regular trio of Egan, O’Connor and Basham at the back, the Blades have the services of Phil Jagielka, who left Everton to return to his former club on a free transfer earlier in the summer.

Hence, United already have enough options in that area of the pitch and there is no way that someone like Wright could possibly have played a part. 

Looking at things from the player’s perspective, Wright will be hoping to resurrect his career in the third-tier after failing to make even a single first-team appearance for the Blades since the start of the previous campaign. 

Keith Hill’s side are currently at the bottom of the League One standings, having started their campaign with a 12-point deduction due to their financial troubles, and the 33-year-old’s experience and know-how of the game might come in handy for the Trotters in their bid to beat successive relegations. 

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To sum it up, Jake Wright’s loan move to Bolton is unlikely to come back to haunt Sheffield United moving forward in the campaign.