Sheffield United will go into the second leg of their Championship play-off semi-final against Nottingham Forest with a deficit to overturn in what is set to be a noisy cauldron at the City Ground.

It was almost the perfect away performance from Forest at Bramall Lane on Saturday, with goals either side of half-time from Jack Colback and Brennan Johnson putting Steve Cooper's outfit into a two-goal lead.

The Tricky Trees could not take that advantage back home though for the second half of the contest, as a stoppage time effort from Sander Berge meant that the Blades are just one goal down ahead of Tuesday night's return fixture.

 

 

 

 

Despite having the majority of the possession, United lacked the fire-power to get on top of Forest at the weekend, and the return of talisman Billy Sharp cannot come soon enough.

After spending some time on the sidelines with a hamstring injury, Sharp was ruled out once again not long after recovering, with a calf issue this time cropping up.

Sharp missed the final two regular games of the 2021-22 campaign and also the first leg of the play-offs against Forest, but United manager Paul Heckingbottom is refusing to rule out some involvement for the 36-year-old this week, telling the Yorkshire Post's Leon Wobschall: "We are doing all we can with him."

Aside from the update to Sharp, there are no fresh injury concerns for the Blades, meaning that they will go into the second leg with the same squad as on Saturday - with the potential addition of Sharp.

The Verdict

If Sheffield United want to get to the play-off final and have another visit to Wembley, then they really need Sharp to be fit and firing tomorrow evening.

Despite his advancing years, Sharp scored 14 times in the Championship this season, which is a fantastic record and you can tell they are missing his goal threat from the first leg performance.

Whilst both Morgan Gibbs-White and Iliman Ndiaye are talented attacking players, neither are out-and-out strikers and there's clearly not a trust in either Daniel Jebbison or William Osula to lead the line.

With all that to take in to consideration, nursing Sharp back to health so he can perhaps play half an hour is important - by that point though there's a chance that the Blades could be further behind depending on how the second leg plays out.