The Monday Profile: Leon Britton

Sadly, the spelling of the name is different, though one is still left to ponder if Sheffield United midfielder Leon Britton is named after Baron Brittan of Spennithorne. The Tory grandee is best known for his spell as Home Secretary during the Thatcher years, a period of parsimony that would shame even the egregious George Osborne, so it’s unlikely that the diminutive south Londoner was christened in homage, even if he first saw the light of day in that borough with the lowest Council Tax of all, Wandsworth.

Britton has been an essential cog of that most pleasing of Championship midfields in recent years, although he has been no exception to the rule that Swansea middle men must endure long spells out with injury. Like your Pratleys, Allens and Boddes, he’s easy on the eye, busy but dainty, a tidy, snappy passer – a man that Brendan Rodgers would doubtless preferred to have kept. He won two player of the year gongs in the early to middle part of the decade and racked up 270 apparances in white. Sadly, his final months have bene mired with displeasure – Swansea missing out on a three quarter of a million pay day courtesy of their former boss; Britton instead taking the route to the People’s Republic of South Yorkshire.

Blades have been busy in the market but Britton might be the shrewdest of all their acquisitions. Certainly he will help to offset the reputation Kevin Blackwell has for grim tactics. Expect him to be pivotal in Red and White, if he can stay clear of crude lunges.

Rob Langham

Rob Langham is co-founder of the defiantly non-partisan football league blog, The Two Unfortunates, a website that occasionally strays into covering issues of wider importance. He's 48 and lives in Oxford while retaining his boyhood support of Reading FC. He tweets as @twounfortunates and has written for a number of websites and publications including The Inside Left, When Saturday Comes, In Bed with Maradona, Futbolgrad and The Blizzard as well as being nominated for the Football Supporters' Federation Blogger of the Year Award in 2013.