Chris Wilder says there is no point ‘sugar-coating’ what is required from his players if they are to pull off Premier League survival. He says he has made it clear to the players what’s required now and there is no need to ‘beat about the bush’.
Chris Wilder said: “There’s no point sugar-coating anything, we have got to win games of football. We are into the last 15 matches. It’s no good me trying to deflect or hide behind that. All sports psychologists will tell me that’s not the right thing to say, but if we want to stay in this division we have to win games of football and we have to do that sooner rather than later. It’s a crackers game that we are involved in and a season of unpredictability. Who is to say we can’t win the last four games of the season? You always see a team who might have only won five in 30, so if you divide that up, but sometimes it’s not about the maths, it goes out the window. What were Villa? Were they seven points off with four games to go last year and won three out their last four to stay up? There will be a team that wins a bunch of games, it happens. We just have to make sure that we do not leave that too late.We have to win games now to give ourselves an opportunity in May to get those results. I know how tough the division is, but how easy it is to lose games as well. You can get in a rut and all of a sudden you lose two or three games and it leads to four, five and six. It can happen and the players understand it. There is no beating about the bush with it, we have to win games and we have to win them soon. I don’t want to be in a position where we need snookers. We are battling on. Who’s to say it’s going to be eight or nine games, we don’t know what the form is going to be like of the teams above us. Why can’t we take inspiration from the Man United victory and go on a run and hit top form? We can’t wait until the end of March to do it, we have got to pick up our fair share of points and keep chipping away at the gap. Can we keep chipping away in the next three or four? Can we chip away and bring it down to single figures, then can we chip away and get it down to four or five points? For me, we have to go right to the end regardless of whether it’s mathematically possible or not. The players know that and that’s the message from me to them, they will do that.”
His Sheffield United team head to West Ham on Monday currently 14 points adrift of fourth-bottom Newcastle. There are just 15 matches remaining in the league season and Wilder is under no illusion about what is required from here on in. The FA Cup has been a useful competition for helping restore confidence and belief to a team that had taken a number of heavy blows during a winless first half of the campaign. Currently, on a run of six wins from nine matches in all competitions, Wilder is hoping the return to form has come at a good time to help them kick-on in the final part of the league campaign.
