Sheffield United: Tony Mowbray says his Blackburn Rovers side were everything The Blades weren't

Beaten 7-0 by Fulham in midweek and having fallen behind only two minutes into yesterday’s match following Rhian Brewster’s superb finish, Rovers lifted themselves off the floor to win thanks to strikes from Reda Khadra, Ben Brereton Diaz and Ian Poveda.

Asked to identify how his youngsters - only two members of Rovers’ starting eleven, including goalkeeper Thomas Kaminski, were aged over 24 - had summoned the courage to change the course of the game, Mowbray replied: “We are like a family. When someone starts attacking your family, you stick together and fight back. That’s what we did. We stuck together and we fought.”

United’s work, by contrast, was lacking in coherence and camaraderie. Slavisa Jokanovic tried to place a protective arm around his players afterwards, insisting he was prepared to take responsibility for the result. But on the pitch, United showed no visible determination or desire to take responsibility for their own performances. Individually and collectively, the overwhelming majority of those selected were seemingly unable to match Rovers’ hunger and intensity.

“With all due respect to Blackburn, they are a really young team and they pushed us with energy and enthusiasm,” Jokanovic said, after watching his side slip to 18th in the Championship table. “We weren’t clinical enough at times, but we weren’t solid enough either in our box. They could have scored more as I feel we could have scored more too. But they (Rovers) did what they had to.”