Sheffield United boss Paul Heckingbottom on where his players need to improve in race for automatic promotion

After a scrappy first half, United made the decisive breakthrough Championship contest when Iliman Ndiaye tucked home from close range for his 12th goal of the season.

It proved to be enough as the Blades held off late rally from Reading and extended their lead over third-placed Middlesbrough to seven points, although they still trail leaders Burnley by 10 points, the Clarets guaranteed of securing an instant return to the top-flight.

Watching from the stands as he served the final game of his three-match touchline ban, Heckingbottom said: “We know where we are now.

“There’s always been games in hand, games either way, whatever. But now we’re seven points clear (of Boro) with 11 games left. There it is. It’s all to play for.”

While he was delighted to get the three points and bounce back quickly from the weekend’s defeat at Blackburn Rovers, Heckingbottom felt there was still more to come from his team.

"It was a good win for us, a big win,” he added. “We were really strong in the first half but we wanted to pose more of a threat in the second and the goal was a fine example of that.

“For all the possession that we had, we could have had more balls slid down the side of Reading’s centre-backs and really caused them more problems.

“We kept getting into that final third but then it was a case of ‘what’s next?’ We had to get their centre-backs facing the way that they didn’t want to and then see what we could produce.

“We had big performances all the way through, although we didn’t pass the ball as well as we would have wanted in the second half.”