Chris Wilder hoping Sheffield United will see a better Oli McBurnie after striker's record-breaking equaliser

Sheffield United were a goal and a player down to West Ham United when Rhian Brewster was sent off in stoppage time on Sunday, but ended up level on both counts thanks to McBurnie's cool penalty in the 13th added minute.

Not that manager Wilder saw it, turning his back as substitute McBurnie followed Oliver Norwood – also on the field at that stage – in scoring a result-turning stoppage-time penalty for the Blades this season.

McBurnie, bought for a then-club record fee in Wilder's first spell as manager, started his second one suspended after becoming the first Premier League player sent off twice this season and has made only two starts.

But he spent the winter break trying to address a long-standing groin problem, and Wilder is hoping he has got to the bottom of it.

"He tells me he was in Qatar rehabbing, I hope he was!" said his manager. "We've got some private security on him!

"He's been away for four or five days to see a specialist and he flew back on Thursday, trained on Friday. He looks and feels different to before he went on the plane so hopefully we might have cured a situation there."

When a James Ward-Prowse penalty restored West Ham's lead after January loan signing Ben Brereton Diaz scored on his Premier League debut, it looked like a deserved point had been thrown away, particularly when Brewster jumped into a tackle where his boot was low, but so was his control.

Wilder was delighted how his players hung in, and were rewarded when Alphonse Areola was adjudged to have fouled McBurnie in an incident which saw the "dazed" goalkeeper replaced by Lukasz Fabianski

"The pleasing aspect was those recovery runs and those blocks late on when they've got overloads and they’ve got some talented players popping it around you," said Wilder.

"When you've played okay to well as I believe we did, and find yourself down deep into stoppage time and down to 10 men it's quite a demoralising feeling as a team but they never showed that. They did those yards to get themselves back in, they did those blocks that allowed us to go down the other end and ask a question."

Wilder's opposite number David Moyes bit his tongue about a controversial game which saw Vladimir Coufal sent off in the seventh added minute and a Hammers penalty appeal rejected in the 14th when Michael Salisbury adjudged both men to blame for wrestling between Jarrod Bowen and Jack Robinson.

"We gave up two points playing against an improving Sheffield United," he reflected. "But I'm certainly not going to talk about referees.

"We're settling for a level of officiating where we're shrugging our shoulders.

"It was a wee bit of an old-fashioned English game, an awful lot of balls bouncing around and it probably lacked a bit of real quality.

"We were decisions away from getting a result, whether we deserved it or not, we were close."