Sheffield United striking transfer balance with old heads and need for fresh blood - Alan Biggs

In the case of Sheffield United, the machine is worth far more than the sum of those parts. That’s one reason why manager Paul Heckingbottom has been wrestling with the hierarchy to keep as many of those parts as possible, including the older cogs.

However, it’s equally true to say that if you stand still in football you will get overtaken. Somewhere between those two a balance is being struck - although on the tight budget figures suggested, you wonder if Hecky and the club can achieve the second part of that equation.

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You see, it’s not through sentiment - as some crowd critics have claimed - that the Blades boss set out to keep all his dozen and more free agents. More through pragmatism from a man who is as hard-headed as they come in that regard.

And let’s not forget, he’s seen the figures, we haven’t. He knows roughly what it’s possible to get and for how much. Don’t think for a minute he wouldn’t want a younger player in any number of positions for United next season.

But a younger player of the same or greater ability? There’s the rub. And affording even one of those might wipe out his entire budget. I’m not a great fan of mass upheaval anyway, not when something works.

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Look at Nottingham Forest and the owner’s deluge of signings that swamped out Steve Cooper’s promotion squad at the beginning of last season. Cooper had to go back to basics to stay up.

United could not resource similar levels of recruitment anyway, which is also part of Hecky’s point; the cost of replacing reliable, experienced players. And hasn’t he earned the right to be trusted?

Maybe, though, his pledge to keep all was an opening bargaining position, knowing he would have a hard time of driving it through and might have to settle somewhere in the middle.

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Yet the core principle remains. And it is the core. The power of this group as a collective. While the value of keeping certain individuals, as their mileage clocks click on into their 30s, is an understandable debate, you don’t want to lose the driving force they represent.