Burnley pile on the pain for Sheffield United to reignite survival chances

Chris Wilder has taken to describing this season as “painful” but it turned positively agonising as Burnley inflicted more deep wounds on his Championship-bound Sheffield United players.

No metaphorical sticking plaster is likely to be large enough to hide the psychological damage gleefully delivered by Vincent Kompany’s team as Burnley recovered from a shaky start to play with the new-found belief befitting a side that has now lost only one of its last seven league games.

While the Blades remain rooted to the foot of the table, 10 points adrift of safety, 19th-placed Burnley are now only three points behind fourth-bottom Nottingham Forest, albeit having played a game more. After spending the entire campaign in the relegation zone, survival is tantalisingly within touching distance.

Given this pair had kept only three clean league sheets between them all season, goals seemed inevitable. The only surprise was that Bramall Lane needed to wait 38 minutes for a defence to fracture. Yet once Sheffield United’s rearguard did splinter, two arrived inside an awful three-minute spell for Ivo Grbic.

First Jacob Bruun Larsen got a little bit lucky after his rather speculative swipe at the ball was deflected past a wrong-footed Grbic as it squirmed, almost apologetically, across the line. Poor Grbic then looked utterly mortified after failing to save Lorenz Assignon’s slightly scuffed shot.

Oli McBurnie should really have opened the scoring in the ninth minute but the Sheffield United striker placed his shot too close to Arijanet Muric who, nonetheless made a fine save. Muric also did well to tip another McBurnie effort over the bar following Gustavo Hamer’s defence-bisecting pass. By then though the power balance had begun shifting Burnley’s way. And particularly in midfield.

That department witnessed a collision of the Blades’ past and future with Norway international Sander Berge, sold by Sheffield United for £12m last summer, up against United’s brightest young prospect, 19-year-old Oliver Arblaster. The hope in South Yorkshire is that the teenager can follow in the recent footsteps of former Blades, Harry Maguire, Kyle Walker, Aaron Ramsdale and Dominic Calvert-Lewin and go on to win a place in the England squad.

If some of Arblaster’s touches demonstrated precisely why he is being tracked by a raft of leading clubs, Berge’s passes - everyone dutifully booed by his once adoring Bramall Lane public - tended to be at the heart of Burnley’s best moves.

It made hurtful viewing for home fans, many of whom jeered their team off at the interval. As the second half began the number or empty seats suggested some had feared a repeat of Sheffield United’s 5-0 defeat at Turf Moor in December and suddenly remembered they had something better to do their afternoon.

They missed a tremendous goal from Hamer as the Brazilian midfielder reignited the contest. After leaving Assignon on his backside and shaping to shoot with his left foot, he instead cut in and curled a shot past Muric.

Burnley’s goalkeeper needed to make an important save to deny Ben Brereton Díaz before Lyle Foster restored the visitors’ two-goal advantage. When Assignon atoned for his humiliation at Hamer’s feet by cueing him up adroitly, an unmarked Foster had time and space to extend his right foot and exacerbate Grbic’s misery.

His afternoon took a further turn for the worse when substitute Johann Berg Gudmundsson scored with his first touch, the newcomer sending a curving left-foot shot imperiously into the back of the net seconds after stepping off the bench.