Billy Sharp has entered the sunset phase of his career. The phase where he admires the setting sun from his home near the beach, that is. The phase where he drives along Sunset Boulevard.
This is not, he stresses, the time when he fades away, light dimming as he sinks silently out of view. Even though Sharp is 37 and he is, as far as English football is concerned, almost beyond the horizon.
Amid a clutch of loan spells and permanent moves to Scunthorpe, Doncaster, Southampton and Leeds, Sheffield-born Sharp is indelibly associated with Sheffield United, where he scored 129 goals in 377 appearances across three spells before his release in the summer after a year in which he scored only three goals and was mostly use…