“Is it a must-win game?” Chris Wilder asked. “Let’s not kid ourselves, of course it is. We have got to win to give ourselves a fighting chance. We can’t hide away from it.” The biggest Premier League game of the season may not be Liverpool versus Manchester City on Sunday. It could be the meeting of its two poorest teams, according to the standings. It is in effect an eliminator; perhaps not for West Bromwich Albion, but certainly for Sheffield United, who kick off 13 points from safety, after making the worst start to a top-flight campaign for 118 years but buoyed by two wins in January. “We would have loved to get that first win four months ago but it wasn’t to be,” said Wilder. Their 2-1 victory over Manchester United last week revived hopes, but he does not try to downplay the importance of Tuesday's match. “If we don’t win games of football we are not going to be in the division next year and we all have to deal with that,” he said. “We can’t hide away from it. We put ourselves in this position so we have to get ourselves out of it.” The best way to do that is to defeat to relegation rivals. A reason why United’s plight is so severe is that they lost 1-0 to Albion in a November game when they had 21 shots. “An incredible missed opportunity,” said Wilder. “Our belief has taken a dent on more than a few occasions with the results we have not picked up.” ________________ ________________ Now it is renewed. A team who reached the half-way stage with five points wonder if the impossible can become possible. “I have to be realistic to know we are not going to win 12 or 13 out of 17, very few do, but we have to win a big bulk of games and I believe we can games of football,” said Wilder. “Is it going to be enough? I can’t answer that.” None have lost more, but 12 of their defeats have come by one-goal margins. The league table may lie. On Saturday, Pep Guardiola told Wilder he was scratching his head at the position United are in. It underlined, he said, what the Premier League is the toughest division in the world. Wilder was grateful for complimentary comments. “It doesn’t gain you points but he doesn’t have to say those things about us,” he said. “It backed up my opinion we are alive.” But their predicament worsened in a weekend when first Newcastle and then Brighton won. “We are only human, we all look at the league table, you can’t get away from it,” Wilder said. Albion looked at it when appointing Sam Allardyce, who has famously never gone down as a top-flight manager but whose eight games have only brought five points. “They have got a hugely experienced manager who has never been relegated and pulled rabbits out of hats left, right and centre before,” Wilder said. “He has got teams out of positions that I don’t think many managers would be able to.” While Allardyce spent Monday trying to add to his squad in trademark deadline-day dealings, Wilder has the same squad, even though this season has brought the worst injury problems of his managerial career. But he can testify to Allardyce’s acumen in the transfer market. Their relationship goes back 24 years to when Allardyce took over at Notts County and inherited a journeyman full-back. “His first transfer was getting rid of one C Wilder to Bradford,” smiled Wilder. “They got promoted the next season. He knows his stuff.”
