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.