Inside Sheffield United’s Christmas Day plans as Blades prepare for crunch Coventry City clash

The Blades are set to welcome a bumper crowd to Bramall Lane, with all available tickets snapped up by home fans and the visitors, looking to continue their good form of late, also bringing a healthy crowd up the M1 to Sheffield.

United’s players strengthened their grip on second place in the Championship last time out with a spirited 2-1 victory away at Wigan Athletic and although footballers are traditionally in training on the big day, Heckingbottom hinted that his players have been given some physical programmes to follow rather than convening together ahead of the meeting with Mark Robins’ Sky Blues.

“They’re used to it [training on Christmas Day], but we’re not this week,” Heckingbottom said. “We’ve done things slightly differently. One of the reasons we’ve been able to is that we’ve got more times between the games, so we’ve just changed the week around. We’ve been in and can have a lot more training days with the players, which is good.

“To get any messages across, tactically and have them all recovered. And then the only thing they need to do Christmas Day is some physical stuff. They know what they’re doing and that will be fine.”

City make the trip north eighth in the Championship table and only a point outside the play-offs, with a game in hand on sixth-placed QPR – who United face at Loftus Road in their first game of 2023.