Sheff Utd had to go 'full tilt' - Wilder

Sheffield United boss Chris Wilder was delighted with his side's showing in their 2-0 win at Stoke City.

The Blades had seen their automatic Premier League promotion hopes ended on Monday by a fourth defeat in five games at Burnley, who went up alongside Leeds.

United are guaranteed a third-placed finish and will now look to end their long wait for success via the play-offs, having failed in all nine of their previous attempts.

"The energy of the group since Monday night has been outstanding and I thought the energy of the supporters was amazing tonight. They gave us a push and I thank every one of them for that," Wilder told BBC Radio Sheffield.

"We wanted to get back to being a winning football club. The attitude from when they came back for the first day of pre-season is we want to win. You have to have that.

"I think a lot of people would be thinking we'd be taking it easy and taking our foot off the gas, you can't do that. You can't just turn it on and off, you get hurt when you do that so it was important we went full tilt.

"It was a physical game, I thought there were some big challenges out there, and we never took a backwards step all night and got the result we wanted."