Kevin Blackwell has vetoed the idea of going to America for the Blades pre-season games because staying closer to home will guarantee more preparation time.

Although no details of matches or venues have been confirmed the Blades boss has revealed his reasoning:

"There were thoughts on going to the States but then we found out the games would have been on Astroturf. We don't play on plastic so I cancelled it.

"We want to play our games on grass so we are looking possibly at Hungary and Holland, plus a few local games as well."

With having recent experience of taking United to play Ferencvaros in Hungary, the advantages of repeating that sort of experience has obvious appeal to the manager:

"The training facilities and pitch etc were very good over there so that would not be a problem, plus it is only two hours away which means we could train on the same day as we travel.

"I don't want us to lose valuable training time on long journeys and if we went to America we would lose four days in total, and that is too much in pre-season."