Gerhard Struber will kick off his time in charge of Bristol City against Sheffield United this weekendRuben Selles replaced Chris Wilder at Sheffield United this summer(Image: Photo by Tony King/Getty Images)

Sheffield United boss Ruben Selles has explained that he expects Gerhard Struber to have made a “lot of adjustments” to Bristol City’s style of play over the summer, ahead of the Robins’ season-opener at Bramall Lane.

City kick off their 2025/26 Championship campaign against the Blades in front of the Sky Sports cameras on Saturday evening. United twice narrowly missed out on promotion to the Premier League last term, finishing third in the regular season before being beaten by Sunderland in the play-off final at Wembley.

The Blades, then under the management of Chris Wilder, got the better of the Robins in the semi-final, but made the decision to part ways with the 57-year-old during the off-season. Shortly after Wilder’s exit was confirmed, former Hull City and Reading boss Selles was named as his replacement, penning a three-year deal in the Steel City.

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Of course, there is also a new face in the Reds’ dugout ahead of the new season, with Struber taking over the reins from Liam Manning over the summer. The two managerial changes mean that there is a sense of uncertainty about just what to expect from Saturday’s game, but Selles appears to have done his homework on City’s new boss.

“With Gerhard going there, watching his Köln team last season and knowing him from his experience in the Red Bull franchise with New York and Salzburg, he’s a coach that wants to be more aggressive in the defensive sense than Bristol has been previously,” the Blades head coach explained in his pre-match press conference. “A little bit higher in the pressure to try and force the opposition to make mistakes.

“As far as I have seen, they have been playing in a back five, but Gerhard has already played in a back four also, so it depends on personnel, I guess. It’s going to be a competitive team, a team that has very clear ideas.

“They have always been, Gerhard’s sides and Bristol, very competent in set plays, so it’s a point at which we need to be strong, and with the crosses from the sides.

“I don’t expect a massive change from them, but I expect a lot of adjustments from the new manager.”

Having been named as Manning’s successor in June, Struber has had the entirety of pre-season to work with his new squad and impose his style of play. The Austrian and his players enjoyed a week of training at the High Performance Centre before spending a week in the Algarve for a warm-weather camp, which ended with a training game against local opposition.

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Since then, the Reds have played five friendlies, two behind closed doors against Bournemouth and Newport County, and three in front of supporters, against Cheltenham Town, Plymouth Argyle, and Real Valladolid.

While those three matches will have offered supporters, as well as Selles and his coaching staff, the chance to get a first look at Struber’s City team in action, the Blades boss has had to be more creative with his preparation ahead of the season-opener.

“I think you need to find the information in a little bit of a different way,” he explained when asked how his team had prepared for the opener. “You need to study the new manager, what he’s done in the recent past, or when he’s been in similar situations.

“We need to check more on individual players, for example, who is coming into the team for Bristol? What does it mean for the team? What does it mean for the opposition? There is no record where you can track some kind of trend, so you need to be ready for the different parameters.

“But it’s actually true that you need to be really focusing on yourself and the way that you want to do things. It’s a little bit more difficult because it takes some different ways to get information, but at the end of the day, we need to focus on what we are and how we can be at our best.”

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