Sheffield United 2-0 Plymouth: Wayne Rooney oversees a fourth consecutive defeat before urging his disappointed players to ‘keep digging in’

All an exasperated Wayne Rooney could do at the end of it was turn to Mike Phelan, his new assistant, and wonder how Plymouth were on the losing side again.

Here, against the league leaders, the Championship’s worst away team outperformed one of the division’s best in almost every metric except the one that counts: goals. This was certainly one of Plymouth’s best performances in months and it still didn’t earn them anything.

Rooney’s team had more shots, more shots on goal, forced more saves, had more possession of the ball, had more corner kicks, a higher expectation of goals from open play and made more precise passes. And they still lost 2-0. When you’re down on 23 and fighting for your life, that’s how it happens. A frustratingly familiar tale of woe.

“We have to keep working,” Rooney said. “There are many positive aspects, but in the end we came away disappointed.

“A lot of things we have been working on with the players in meetings and on the training ground were about showing resilience. We need to start turning performances into results.”

The enthusiastic away support set off for this 500+ mile journey at 4am with hope rather than expectations, but the reality was a performance packed with reasons why Rooney can keep Plymouth up.

Midfielder Gustavo Hamer (left) put the Blades 1-0 up after 19 minutes of play at Bramall Lane.

Forward Kieffer Moore doubled the home lead by converting a penalty.

For a team with one win in their previous 10 games and three consecutive defeats (conceding 12 goals and scoring just two in the process), Plymouth started brightly, sweeping with purpose.

So when Gustavo Hamer volleyed in from outside the area in the 19th minute against the run of play following a corner kick, Rooney and his players seemed to be left gasping for air.

Only they stood firm in it. They continued playing in small spaces and the local crowd became increasingly agitated.

Blades boss Chris Wilder was pacing furiously inside his technical area and may well have lost his head when Plymouth almost equalised, thanks to a wayward shot from Darko Gyabi from six yards out.

Five minutes after the restart, an angry Wilder had seen enough that, with his team still outplayed on their own turf, he made a triple substitution to bring on Kieffer Moore, Sam McCallum and Jamie Shackleton. That gave some life to this dull version of the Blades, with Moore in particular a real problem for Kornel Szucs.

When Ryan Hardie’s header just after the hour mark was parried away by former Plymouth goalkeeper Michael Cooper, the visiting bench could only observe with resignation that this would not be the day.

And as the clock ticked down, a rash challenge on Tom Davies by Brandon Galloway saw referee Farah Hallam award a penalty which Moore converted.

“There was no complacency or arrogance on our part,” Wilder insisted. “We are not an arrogant club because we have been in League One for six years and last year we were ridiculed. “We can’t give it a big deal and this was a dangerous team today.