When team-mates turn on each other instead of the opposition, it does not say much for their chances of staging an unlikely escape from relegation.
Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder called on his team to ‘swing some punches’ when he returned to the club last December and here Jack Robinson and Vini Souza took his instructions a little too literally.
Trailing to a header from Wolves forward Pablo Sarabia that proved the only goal of the game, Souza and Robinson called one another out before a restart in play, with Souza appearing to shove his team-mate in the face. Neither will face action from the club.
It was not on the scale of Kieron Dyer and Lee Bowyer’s punch-up while at Newcastle in 2005, nor the fisticuffs between Blackburn pair Graeme Le Saux and David Batty a decade earlier.
But it illustrated the sense of hopelessness the Blades must feel as they continue an apparently inevitable journey back to the Championship. This result leaves them eight points from safety.
‘It is a passionate game,’ said Wilder. ‘We don’t want to see that every week but if it takes something like that to get them going, I’m happy. That happens at every club up and down the country three or four times a year.
‘I can’t condone it and we have to be careful as we have a responsibility to young kids but that happens behind closed doors at every level, at Manchester City and at the bottom of League Two.
