Chris Wilder says Sheffield United must look at everything to get to grips with injuries - even John Egan's future

The Blades captain will again be missing at home to Brighton and Hove Albion on Sunday as he continues to recover from Achilles surgery in October.

Even with goalkeeper Ivo Grbic recovered from concussion, and Wilder hoping forwards Oli McBurnie and/or Ben Brereton Diaz can return from the injuries which kept them out at Luton Town last week, Chris Basham, George Baldock, Daniel Jebbison and now Rhys Norrington-Davies are out.

Absentees have been a huge problem in recent years, with record signing Rhian Brewster unavailable for 65 of 132 matches since his debut season, for example.

"It's super-difficult," said Wilder. "The club had a review and there's a lot of good things happening. That reflection will continue but you are changing things mid-season and you can't always do what you want to do but there's a lot of moving parts to it.

"There's (been) a risk and reward a little bit to get into the Premier League and a couple of other things we would like to change.

"It's not one thing you can nail down and put finger on it, a lot of things we need to address.

"When you look at Max (Lowe) standing on a sprinkler and turning his ankle, Basham who's been ever present for so many years, breaks his leg and John, who's not missed many for us or internationally, lands and does his Achilles.

"But we have to sort it out from a recruitment, conditioning and training point of view because it has hurt, it hurt the previous manager (Paul Heckingbottom) and it will continue to hurt if we don't get it right.

"At Middlesbrough we turned it around. We're confident we can improve that but there's loads of moving parts, we can't go, 'It's your fault.'"

Egan is out of contract this summer, and Wilder admitted it could come into his thinking. However, he is hopeful the Republic of Ireland central defender will be back before then to prove himself.

"It's going to be tight but we've had him down to hopefully come back before the end of the season," said Wilder, who bought Egan in 2018.

"You never know, going into the final two or three games if he makes the strides and the speed of recovery he is doing at the moment, if John's available and needed he's certainly someone we can rely on with his experience, know-how and ability."

Beyond that, Wilder said: "It's quite a difficult one because we've talked about availability at this football club and it's huge. The availability of players for quite a long period has not been great and it affects everything – your consistency, continuity, team selection, ability to change things, rest players, to get into any sort of rhythm.

"We need players that are available and you have to make decisions on players. That isn't being negative to the likes of Basham and John Egan who've been outstanding and I'd love them to still be part of things moving forward.

"But we have to make sure John gets back to full fitness and it's not just an emotional signing because of what he's done in the past."

Baldock is expected back in the next "10 days to two weeks" following calf trouble, Jebbison another two weeks or so after that, and midfielder Tom Davies is still "a couple of weeks" from being able to turn his promising substitute cameos in the last two games into starts.