Sheffield United travelled to Nottingham Forest on Tuesday night for the second leg of their play-off semi-final. 

Despite United putting up a great fight to take the game to extra time and then penalties, it was Forest who progressed to the final after Brice Samba saved the penalties of Oliver Norwood, John Fleck and Morgan Gibbs-White.

It was an eventful night all round as Paul Heckingbottom received a yellow card after a coming together with on-loan Forest player Djed Spence.

The Blades boss felt the opposition player was taking too long with a throw in and gave the ball to back to him with a bit of force which caused a coming together between both squads on the touchline.

After the game, Heckingbottom spoke about the incident telling Yorkshire Live: "They're my players. Some of them are nearly as old as me, but they will be boys and you will protect them like family.

"I won't have anyone taking the mickey. It's my fault and a yellow card without a doubt. I thought Michael and his team of officials were excellent, they were really good. I did my bit to highlight we are not having a team run a game against us and I thought Michael and his staff were very good after that.

"Gamesmanship, whatever you want to call it, but not against my team. Regardless of what happened there was no way we were going out without a fight.

"Sometimes you need to do it and defend your players. We needed that fight, we needed a spark and intensity. I don't want to be disrespectful to Forest, I really don't, because credit to them and congratulations to them they have got to the final. But we were the better team, we had the better players. I wanted us to show that and I thought we did."

The Verdict: 

In a game like this one, there was always going to be tension between the two sides and for Paul Heckingbottom he just got a bit frustrated with the way he felt Spence was wasting his side's time.

He has come out and held his hands up that the yellow card for him was deserved but ultimately he felt it was worth it for the message it sent his team that they had to fight.

The Blades certainly did do that and despite being 1-0 down going into half-time, they made sure they fought back in the second half which took the game to the very end.