Sheffield United defender John Egan's condition is addressed by Paul Heckingbottom

The Sheffield United centre-half made his return from a toe injury towards the end of the second-half at Elland Road, as the visitors slipped towards their 24th defeat of the Premier League season.

Despite naming him on the bench, Heckingbottom acknowledged he would have preferred not to have used Egan against Marcelo Bielsa’s side.

But speaking after the match, which United eventually lost 2-1, he said: “John has had a couple of days of training. We can get some more into him now, and hopefully really start to build him up, because John wasn’t in a position to do 90 minutes.”

“It was important for John to come back and it was important for us to have him back,” Heckingbottom, United’s caretaker manager, continued. “It would give us more options, the opportunity to do different things for different games and bring some real competition for places to the squad.

“The good thing is, from our point if view and also from John’s, is that he finished it okay. There doesn’t seem to have been any issues, even though we might have brought him back (into action) a little bit earlier than we probably would have liked. That's the way it is though, and he's a tough boy and a tough character who wants to be involved."

Unired slipped even deeper into trouble at the bottom of the Premier League table after being beaten 2-1 in West Yorkshire.