"Gone on to be valued at £30m+" - Sheffield United transfer regret issued over Everton star | OneFootball

FLW has been speaking with our Sheffield United fan pundit to discover which former Blade they believe the club were too quick to sell...

This article is part of Football League World's 'Terrace Talk' series, which provides personal opinions from our FLW Fan Pundits regarding the latest breaking news, teams, players, managers, potential signings and more…

Sheffield United, like every club, have seen players leave Bramall Lane and go on to achieve big things in their career.

Among the ex-Blades players to do so over the years rea the likes of Aaron Ramsdale, Che Adams, Kyle Walker, and Harry Maguire.

Finding the right time to sell a player is never an easy process to go through or decision to make, as every player that leaves has the potential to haunt that club with their exploits elsewhere.

We wanted to find out which previous player our Sheffield United fan pundit, Jimmy (AKA Blades Ramble), believes that the club parted ways with too soon.

Dominic Calvert-Lewin is Sheffield United's "one that got away"

Jimmy said: "I think every club has got a player that they feel like they sold too early. If I'm going to talk about what kind of impact it had on the side, I think selling James Beattie was an absolute shocker of a decision.

"He was banging in goals, and he'd only been with us about six months. The best pure striker I've ever seen at Sheffield United, James Beattie, and we sold him at the first opportunity.

"But in terms of talent and selling them early, you could look at obvious examples like Kyle Walker and Harry Maguire. But for that stage of development, I think we got okay money for those, obviously in hindsight, you'd always want more due to what they went on to achieve.

"The one that jumps out is Dominic Calvert-Lewin. He was sold for £1m, and it just shows the state of the club at that time. It was fully justifiable why we chose to sell him, but he's gone on to be valued at £30m+.

"Oh, how we could do with that sort of cash nowadays. One that got away I think."

Blades will probably wish they handed Calvert-Lewin big Bramall Lane chance

Sold to Everton in the summer of 2016 for a relatively small fee, Calvert-Lewin was a teenage striker who hadn't been fully trusted to make the first-team leap on a consistent basis with Sheffield United.

A League One side at the time, the bright lights of the Premier League proved too big of an opportunity for the England youth international to turn down, and in his first season at Goodison Park, he'd already made just one fewer senior appearance (11) during his multiple years in and around the first team at Bramall Lane (12).

From the 2017/18 season onwards, the big centre-forward would go on to become a vital part of the Toffees' starting XI, and by the end of the 2019/20 campaign, he'd bagged his first double-digit scoring season in the Premier League.

During his best years in an Everton shirt, Calvert-Lewin was one of the most prolific centre forwards in the top-flight, earning himself a handful of England caps too.

Even if it would've proved difficult to keep hold of Calvert-Lewin, Sheffield United must look at what he's been able to achieve in his career and ponder what might have been had they given him a real shot at being the main man at the club.

They perhaps should've taken it as a warning over the potential for future regret when they had a Premier League side come calling, despite the fact he'd made just 12 senior appearances for the Blades, and hadn't scored a single goal for the club.

Due to the loyalty he's shown to Everton as well, had he been the one to fire Sheffield United up the EFL and into the Premier League, that he would've remained with the club and provided them with a quality centre-forward in the prime years of his career.

That's all hypothetical though, but what is surely a fact is that the Blades will wish they got to see more of Calvert-Lewin whilst he was still theirs.