Comment: Why Sheffield United could benefit from concentrating on Championship play-offs after third straight defeat

That was interim coach Jon Worthington talking about his Huddersfield Town players on Saturday evening, but it could have been the manager of any team on the outer edges of a title race or an automatic promotion battle, mired in the relegation zone or, like the Terriers, feeling like the play-offs are slipping out of reach.

Never giving it in until it is mathematically impossible is a footballing badge of honour, and one Sheffield United's Chris Wilder will certainly be wearing at the moment. But is it such a bad thing?

Maybe, just maybe, there is a time and a place for it. Maybe it has come at Bramall Lane.

Elite sport is played between the ears as well as on the pitch, and the closer to the sharp end of a competition, the more important it is in sifting the winners from the losers.

It was quite right so much attention paid to Rory McIlroy's sports psychologist Bob Rotella after the Northern Irishman finally ended his 11-year wait to complete the set of golf's Masters on Sunday in Augusta, with golf fan Wilder almost certainly watching from his sofa.

McIlroy's near-misses have become the stuff of legend. In footballing parlance, he had become more "Spursy" than Tottenham Hotspur, finding imaginative ways to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

A double bogey on the first to wipe out his overnight lead looked like being the latest, but in hindsight perhaps the release in expectation helped him drag it back to win a sudden-death play-off.

"Never give up on your dreams," McIlroy told daughter Poppy – and the world – as he tried on his new green jacket. As life lessons go, it was a good one, but with caveats.

York City did give up three weeks ago, and it seems to have had a similarly liberating effect on them as the double bogey did for McIlroy.

The Minstermen lost at Braintree Town on March 22 to drop 14 points behind Barnet in the race for the only automatic promotion place into the Football League.

“Before today I didn’t think (the title race was over) and that was the message to the players," admitted manager Adam Hinshelwood. "I think it’s over now, to be honest."

York have won all four games since, scoring 17 goals. Barnet have won one, lost one, drawn one. Now the gap is six points – and three goals' difference – with four games left for each. The Bees are still favourites but the certainty has ebbed.

In April 1992, shortly before Sky invented football, Leeds United followed back-to-back draws with a 4-0 hammering at Manchester City. A point clear with two games in hand, a first English title in 25 years was Manchester United's to lose.

They did.

A weight lifted off their shoulders, a 0-0 draw at Liverpool were the only points the Whites dropped in their last five games.

Now Leeds and Burnley are the ones with everything to lose in the race for automatic promotion to next season’s Premier League.

In theory, Sheffield United could wipe out the five-point gap to one or more likely the other over the Easter weekend, when they host Cardiff City and travel to Burnley.

This time last week, with one win in six and their vice-captain Pascal Struijk picking up what Whites fans feared then and know now is a season-ending injury, things felt pretty desolate at Elland Road, where a ragged-looking team were stuck outside of the play-off places. Now they are top of the table.

It is not just three straight defeats but the manner of them behind the sense of foreboding now parked at Bramall Lane. Only one goal, Wilder's dig at the away fans at Oxford United and televised handbags in the Home Park tunnel all give the impression of a team that have lost their cool when they need it most.

Add in that Leeds seem to have regained theirs – back-to-back wins steadying them after that six-game wobble – and that Burnley's has never gone away, 29 league games unbeaten.

But even if – if – automatic promotion is over, the season is not.

The Blades are in a different situation to Huddersfield, five points adrift of the League One play-offs with four games to play.

Whilst the Terriers have no choice but to shut out realism, follow Worthington's lead and fight to the end, the Blades have an escape route they must be careful not to block off.

The first leg of the play-off for whoever finishes third in the Championship is in 23 days' time, and the Blades might be well advised reset their minds for that now because if they go into it weighed down by psychological baggage, the best team in the four-team competition will be the first knocked out.

Concentrating on the booby prize will hurt the pride of Wilder – who loves his golfing analogies – and go against everything he believes in.

But it might just be what takes his team back to the Premier League – maybe even automatically.