Alan Biggs' Sheffield United column: Blades have supreme mental strength - especially this long-serving defender

Possibly, but they can also be removed.

Chris Wilder wants any mental shackles removed now that Sheffield United have proved themselves to be more than competitive in the top flight.

Not that any player has lacked confidence; more perhaps that they are only just discovering that their limits are some way higher than they thought.

No team member can attest to that more than Chris Basham.

He’s the Blades’ longest-serving player and no-one has had a greater low-to-high experience, albeit that he played fleetingly at this level earlier in his career.

The manager's biggest bone of contention, evidently, is that he wants every player to start believing they truly belong at this exalted level.

That’s taken some sinking in, even for someone aged 31 like Basham.

Wilder, he tells me, has been relentless on this point: “The thing he’s most going on about is believing in ourselves more; believing in what we’re doing; having our shoulders out ready to play in the Premier League. And enjoying the hype around it.

“I think everybody has stepped up their game.”

The Arsenal win and point at West Ham, on top of the narrowest and most regrettable of defeats to Liverpool, hardened that confidence.

Basham added: “We haven’t been creating as many chances as we can. Against Arsenal I thought we got in behind their back four quite a lot.

"There was a nice feeling at the end of the game that ‘yeah we deserve to be here.’

“And that’s what the gaffer has been going on about and what he wants. Belief can’t not build if you’ve just beaten Arsenal and taken the European champions all the way.”

Basham qualifies that as “a fine line in believing in what you do but also being on the edge as well.”

It’s a reference to occasional individual errors without which “we don’t look like we’re going to get beat.” He means by anybody.

The personal challenge extends to more marauding from deep for a man revelling in his role as one of United’s twin overlapping centre backs.

He had a 100 per cent dribbling success rate when the stats were returned post-Arsenal. “That’s the one I needed to focus on more,” he revealed. “The gaffer told me to let my hair down again, have a run. I did that and enjoyed it as well.”

Appreciating his “Bashambauer” nickname, but “not letting it become something it’s not", he admits to having butterflies before every game.

“I want to stay in this league as long as I possibly can. It’s all you ever wanted to do as a kid and I’m doing it now.”

We came in on the subject of confidence. Let’s go out on it.

How’s this for Basham himself getting those shoulders back? “I see myself as one of the boys who’s hopefully going to be involved every week - and play well.”

Burnley at Bramall Lane on Saturday are another benchmark of what can be achieved.