Wright’s quiet authority and thirst for hard work were some of the qualities that persuaded Sheffield United manager Chris Wilder to bring the centre back to Bramall Lane in 2016.<\/p>\n
Having previously captained Oxford United for five years and having enjoyed spells at Halifax the defender brought vital experience to Wilder’s squad.<\/p>\n
Wright played 30 times for the Blades that season without losing a game. The club were promoted with more than 100 points.<\/p>\n
Wright admits his old gaffer was “surprised” about his post-football career.<\/p>\n
“I don’t think he ever saw me doing it to be honest but then again it’s not something I thought I’d be going into either.”<\/p>\n
Former United teammates have also expressed intrigue and amusement at their one-time skipper’s new career path.<\/p>\n
Paul Coutts, a ball playing midfielder and joker of Wilder’s dressing room described Wright as an “unassuming lad” with a “dry sense of humour”.<\/p>\n
“I can’t believe he’s working in schools but to be honest he probably just wanted to get away from us idiots,” he laughs.<\/p>\n
Chris Basham was part of a three-man defence at United that limited Wright’s playing time towards the end of his career in Sheffield.<\/p>\n
“It wouldn’t be my choice of work that’s for sure,” says Basham.<\/p>\n
He adds: “Jake was a great leader though, he’s a credit to himself.<\/p>\n
“The kids will definitely look up to him and he’ll be able to guide them for sure.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Wright’s quiet authority and thirst for hard work were some of the qualities that persuaded Sheffield United manager…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":674718,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-674717","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674717","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=674717"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/674717\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/674718"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=674717"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=674717"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=674717"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}