After a three-month break, it was perhaps too much to ask that the football should be particularly compelling. It certainly was not that.
But in the absence of any riveting play this was perhaps exactly what we needed. This was something familiar, something normal - a good old controversy about a goal that should have been given but wasn’t.
Sympathy is due to Chris Wilder’s Sheffield United, even if he will know his team did not way play particularly well.
This most blunt of Yorkshireman had spoken beforehand of the need for his team to create their tempo.