Sheffield United's Andre Brooks gets special mention from the boss after helping stun Spurs

Awarded his first senior start against the visitors from north London, Brooks repaid Heckingbottom’s faith with a combative display before succumbing to cramp during the closing stages. Although his replacement Iliman Ndiaye scored the only goal of the contest with 11 minutes remaining, Brooks’s performance merited a special mention from the United manager following the final whistle.

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“Andre did great,” said Heckingbottom, who worked with the academy graduate in his previous guise as the Championship club’s under-23’s coach. “I’m really pleased, delighted in fact, for both him and his family.”

“Andre has been in our academy since he was nine years old,” Heckingbottom added. “He’s a talented player and he handles the ball great. I already knew that from working with him before. All Andre needs is a framework to work within. If you leave him alone, then he can become too much of a free spirit. But he worked well, really well, within the framework we gave him out there.”

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Brooks was among eight changes Heckingbottom made to his team for the meeting with Spurs, who saw Lucas Moura hit the woodwork before gradually running out of ideas as the fifth round tie progressed. Ismaila Coulibaly spurned a glorious opportunity on the stroke of half-time but United put that disappointment behind them and grew in stature following the interval. Second in the table, they travel to fourth placed Blackburn Rovers on Saturday before meeting Jon Dahl Tomasson’s men again - this time at Bramall Lane - in the quarter-finals later this month.

Revealing when Brooks discovered he would be featuring against Spurs, whose assistant manager Cristian Stellini accused of lacking “energy”, Heckingbottom said: “It was the day before, yesterday, when he knew he was going to come in. I left him alone to be honest. But I saw Jack (Lester, United’s head of player development) go over to him and there were lots of big smiles.”