Sheffield United's Mr Indestructible Oliver Norwood puts his Championship ever-present record down to luck

It will be a massive shock if the Blades' holding midfielder and centre-back are not in the starting line-up at home to Burnley in the Championship's early kick-off on Saturday because even in early November, they are the club’s only two ever-presents this season.

Since being substituted at Watford with 21 minutes of the opening game left, Norwood has not missed a moment of the campaign.

Considering how tough it has been for the club to keep key players fit, it is some achievement.

"I think I'm just fortunate," says the 31-year-old, who only missed two league games last season. "I look after myself, obviously, but a lot of it is fortunate. I'm built a certain way, I've got a robustness and I've played with knocks and strain, I just get on with it.

"If you only wanted to play when you felt 100 per cent you wouldn't play many games.

"I've had a hernia operation in the off-season we got promoted so I never missed a training session then. I must be very lucky."

With both Norwood and Egan, though, it is not just quantity but quality.

Where the Irishman is a reassuring presence in the heart of the back three, Norwood sits in front of him and pulls the strings. He has three assists and two goals this season, though he admits the second number should be higher, saying team-mates are telling him to treat shooting more like passing.

If Norwood counts himself lucky, others cannot say the same with a punishing Championship schedule taking its toll on so many of his team-mates.

Sander Berge, Rhys Norrington-Davies, Rhian Brewster, Jayden Bogle, Max Lowe, Daniel Jebbison and Jack O’Connell will all miss out against Vincent Kompany’s league leaders and there are doubts over James McAtee, Tommy Doyle, Chris Basham and Iliman Ndiaye.

John Fleck, Jack Robinson, Enda Stevens, Ciaran Clark, Ben Osborn and Billy Sharp have already had significant lay-offs.

The chopping and changing makes it harder to build the consistency needed to win promotion from the 46-game Championship.

"Myself, Flecky and Sander started the season the way we finished the (last) season," says Norwood of his regular midfield partners. "You have relationships with players in terms of you know where they're going to be, where they're not going to be, what they're going to do."

For Norwood, a well-earned break is looming with the Championship set for a one-month lay-off after next weekend's game at Cardiff City so the lucky few can take part in the World Cup. It will not just be about bodies but minds after what has felt like a really condensed first phase of the season.

"It's been tough," admits Norwood, a Burnely boy who after four years here regards Sheffield as his second home.

"We've played the majority of Saturdays and Tuesdays and you put travel in there, hotels, long hours on the bus and it's difficult.

"But it's why we get paid what we get paid. We're paid to be professional footballers and you should be able to play 90 minutes whenever asked. That's something I pride myself on, being able to play the amount I have.

"Mentally by that time (the end of next week) we'll be ready for a week of doing nothing or whatever we get off ready to kick on and achieve our goal of promotion to the league."

It is not just back fours Norwod protects either. If Doyle, McAtee, Basham and Ndiaye picked up bumps and bruises in Tuesday's hard-fought 1-0 win at Bristol City, Reda Khadra took a verbal kicking from opposition manager Nigel Pearson, who called the forward "high maintenance".

Bramall Lane is a tough school, but when the dressing room elders, of whom Norwood is one, sense a team-mate is being unfairly dealt with, they will rally round.

"It's the high maintenance comment I think is out of order," argues Norwood. "He wouldn't be allowed by not just the players but the management staff here to be high maintenance. it's not the characters we bring to the football club.

"There's a lot of work goes in behind the scenes, they get references off clubs you've played for, people you've worked with.

"I'm pretty sure if he was like that, we wouldn't have signed him.

"Nobody in our dressing room is that way. If you're not working hard in training every day, you've no chance of playing."

Physically and mentally, you need to be tough to play for the Blades. Norwood has done it 190 times.