Former Sheffield Wednesday midfielder and pundit Carlton Palmer has suggested that Sheffield United will be able to challenge for promotion at the first time of asking next term under Slavisa Jokanovic.

The Blades suffered a miserable campaign in the Premier League last term and they made the major step in parting ways with the influential Chris Wilder.

Having taken time to assess potential managerial candidates over a few months, Sheffield United eventually decided to bring in a manager with two promotions on his CV in for form of Jokanovic.

Despite transfer speculation having emerged over the future of Aaron Ramsdale and also reports circulating around Sander Berge’s potential departure, the Blades have so far kept most of their squad together during the summer transfer window.

Speaking to FootballFanCast, Palmer suggested that the Blades are well placed in terms of their squad preparation to bounce straight back to the Premier League and he expects them to be right up there next season having appointed Jokanovic.

He said: “I know the players that Chris Wilder was signing, having spoke to him at the time, he was always mindful of the fact they may go down and if they did go down, he wanted a young enough squad to challenge to come back.

“It seems at the moment they’re keeping all those players and they just recruited a very good manager. I expect them to challenge to go back up next season.”

The verdict

You would have to agree completely with Palmer here, Sheffield United have to be amongst the favourites for promotion next season. That come with them having a lot of players that are proven winners at this level and also they have brought in a manager that is used to guiding teams to promotion from the Championship.

Jokanovic would have been expecting to keep the vast majority of the squad together heading into next season and that appears to be what is going to happen. That means that it will only take a few minor tweaks in the transfer market this summer to get them in a place where they can be confident of securing promotion.

There will be pressure on the Serbian manager’s shoulders to ensure that he is able to guide them to promotion, but having said that he has already handled that well enough at both Watford and Fulham. Therefore, unless something unexpected happens with player sales in the next few weeks, you would have to expect them to be right up there next season.