Our ambitions for Champions League qualification took a dent at Bramall Lane as we were beaten 3-0 by the Blades. While he has already stated he will learn a lot as a manager from that defeat and the disappointing performance that went with it, when it comes to his players he feels it is more important for them to focus their attention on what they can do in the future than what they could have done differently in the past.

‘I certainly feel like there’s not a huge inquest needed because of where we’re at,’ he explained. ‘The games are coming quickly, we’re nearly at the end of the season. I will certainly analyse the game myself but for the players the biggest thing for them is to be positive and look to the next one.

‘I know the feeling as a player, it was a horrible game for the players. None of our players played well. When you do that at a place like Sheffield United and they’re playing well it’s very difficult to get anything out of it. We didn’t. I won’t dwell on that this time and I’ll concentrate on the games ahead and the players will too.’

However, that does not mean he is not concerned by what he saw in Sheffield and knows there is work to do for him and his players to improve things at both ends of the pitch, especially in terms of cutting out the errors which have cost us this season.

‘Clearly I didn’t like the performance. I don’t know where it was on the scale, but it was certainly one of our worst days of the season in terms of the performance. You get what you deserve on that front.

‘Defensively, we need to absolutely focus on the games ahead. I would love to have the consistency in the back four, the back two, the back three, whatever you want to call it, that you pick. That’s what you strive for, but unfortunately this season at times we’ve made mistakes and individual errors.

‘You don’t want to concede that amount of goals. There’s many reasons when you look through the season at those goals. Sometimes I bemoan that we don’t score enough, that gives you the nature of feeling comfort in games and nervousness can sometimes create problems that can lead to goals but we know we’ve made far too many errors in terms of giving goals away and that is something we need to absolutely address.

‘That’s the position we’re in. The only way out of it is hard work by the individuals involved, to get through this season, to try and be as successful as we can, because we’re still in a good position considering probably a lot of expectations at the start of the season, and then we’ll look forward.’